“Ephphatha, be opened.” Today, Jesus orders us to be opened to the Father’s plan and to adopt a sincere concern for all his children across the globe, across the millennia. We are to do so in virtue of our Baptism. The rite of Baptism includes the gestures performed by Jesus and the word “ephphatha” “be opened” that he uttered when he cured the deaf person with a speech impediment.
This complete openness is required of us for two reasons.
From the Bible’s perspective, illness has a constraining grip on all components of the affected individual. Therefore, Jesus’ intention in healing is to free us completely, so that we are, again, able to use all components of our being: body and soul, mind and heart, education and cultural background, personality traits and emotions to relate to others in a way becoming of our Christian calling and in a productive, constructive fashion.
But there is another crucial aspect about the openness Jesus requires of us in virtue of our Baptism. It is the openness to God’s action that tears down any exclusivity, any clamor for preferential treatment reserved for us and those in our group. Indeed, we could be living a deep-rooted, centenary contradiction that has been distorting the term “Catholic” from its original significance. In contradiction to our Baptism, our concern might be only for people within our circle of caring. That circle is, of course, protected by walls and fences which could be physical or virtual, but always secure.
Therefore, the command: “Ephphatha, be opened” is addressed to us forcefully and repeatedly, until our circle of concern expands to include people outside of our family, our group, our community, our race, our creed, our shared preferences and ideas, and becomes universal.
It is in such a context that we should consider the readings for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Isaiah 35:4-7; Mark 7:31-37) and interpret Jesus’ words and actions. They are revealing and fulfilling precisely what Isaiah prophesies about God’s intention and intervention on behalf of all his children: Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; Then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the dumb will sing. (Isaiah 35:5-6)
Hence, the order “Ephphatha, be opened” is an order to open our whole self to God’s intervention and healing power, to reach beyond the walls and fences we put up or we found already set in place as we grew. We are unequivocally informed that our God doesn’t see any fences or walls because, in his eyes, there aren’t any. His unusual way of exacting vindication and doling out divine recompense by restoring hope, encouraging the disheartened and healing the sick is available to every child of his both within our circle of concern and outside of it.
Naturally, across the pages of the Gospel, Jesus proves this painful yet comforting point countless times. For example, today, we see him traveling in a way that makes absolutely no practical sense unless we realize that he is trying to drive home a crucial point: the Father loves and embraces everyone. Jesus goes up north into Lebanon’s pagan territory and then, returns south into Galilee, but skips Hebrew cities and cures, instead, a man from the Decapolis, (another pagan conglomerate) who was deaf and mute, to display the Father’s care and power for all his children beyond religious boundaries. And—the reaction of these pagans is one of amazement: They were exceedingly astonished, and they said, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” (Mark 7:37)
As Jesus points out to his fellow citizens of Nazareth the Father’s loving concern for all his children, including pagans like the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, their furious reaction sands in stark contrast.
When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. (Luke 4:28-29)
So, the question we ought to ask ourselves now is this: “Are we presumptuous?
Presumption is a condition that tends to settle in little by little. From childhood we might have received a lot of praise even for little achievements while we always, instinctively, hid our flaws and wrongdoings. Hence, unless we were trained to examine our conscience at least once a day before going to bed, and to confront our inner attitude with the words of life offered us at the Table of the Word, we might have grown unaware of our ills and miseries. Consequently, without this openness to God’s Word and without awareness of our true inner dispositions, we might have focused out attention on the annoying flaws of people close to us without realizing how similar they were to our failings. Concentrating, then, on our fine qualities, good reputation and praiseworthy behavior, inevitably we would think that we, and those in our group, deserve preferential treatment!
Thus, this set of readings could be a call back to reality.
Every Eucharist, every act of true worship and thanksgiving begins with a penitential act. If properly done it should, first, make us comfortable belonging to the sinful throng of God’s children; then joyful and grateful for being the objects of the Father’s infinite mercy. The penitential act is to be followed by a thorough confrontation with God’s words of life to open us to see our flaws with so much clarity that we would not dream any more of expecting preferential treatment but of seeking the Lord’s healing touch.
As our openness to grace becomes natural or, rather, supernatural, our gratitude will be intense and we will erupt in a loud cry of amazement: ”The Lord keeps doing all things well!”
