Christian Art | Jesus Heals A Deaf Man | Miracles Of Jesus | Forgiveness Of Sins
Mark 7: 31-37 – 23rd Sunday Year B & Friday, Week 5, Ordinary Time (Audio Bible, Spoken Word)
31 ¶ And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis.
32 And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.
33 And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue;
34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
35 And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.
36 And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it;
37 And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
There is a sacramental quality to Jesus’ healing of the deaf man, as he takes him to one side, touches him, lifts his eyes to heaven, and then speaks the healing words of command. In the act of healing, as Jesus lays on his hands, he seems to act as intermediary between the deaf man and heaven, and so it through this that the man is healed.
The man’s deafness would be understood by the Jewish people not merely as a physical handicap but as a consequence of sin. Still, in our day, as in the New Testament, we often hear of physical handicaps being used to express, metaphorically, stupidity or ignorance – when, for example, we hear of people being blind or deaf to the truth. The healing Jesus offers is, then, not only of a physical condition – and of the problems with speech that naturally follow from deafness – but is also spiritual, a forgiveness of sin.
Jesus does not in these verses explicitly tell the man that his sins are forgiven him. Elsewhere in the Bible, when he does say this, he prompts the Jews’ angry reaction: ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ Nonetheless, this is understood in the Gospels, and may perhaps do something to help explain why Jesus wishes his healing miracles to be kept secret.
We can only guess why Jesus asks for this secrecy. Perhaps it was because he wanted to be known for his teaching and his spiritual healing rather than for more showy and crowd-pleasing spectacles. Perhaps, as a man, he is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests for healing. Perhaps his purpose demands secrecy. Perhaps he fears what the Romans might do should large mobs start gathering around a charismatic leader, proclaiming him king. We do not know.
Christ is, to say the least, a complex character. He is both God and man and we cannot know how this great mystery could have worked out in practice. He is too a dangerous character, in more ways than one. In his lifetime on Earth, he was socially and religiously dangerous, including to established authorities. In our lifetime now he has power to transform our lives, our souls.
‘Happy the soul which desires the food of righteousness and thirsts for such a drink; had it not already tasted of its sweetness, it would not seek after them. When the soul harkens to the spirit of the prophet saying, “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” it has already received some part of the heavenly sweetness, and been inflamed with love for this purest of joys.’ Pope St Leo the Great
Baldwin of Canterbury’s reflection centres on the divine Word as the active presence of God in creation, revelation, and redemption. His argument develops from the scriptural assertion that “the Word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword.” The Word, identified with Christ himself, is not merely speech or symbol but a reality that possesses life, communicates life, and effects change [ … ]
Jesus’ words to us in these verses may seem very strange indeed, even brutal. Are we really to hate our father, our mother, our family? We may recall the time when Jesus rejects his mother and family when they are calling him [ … ]
On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years. His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened: ‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was he indeed a carpenter, or has Joseph’s true role in the society in which he lived been misconstrued and forgotten to us? Though it be a beautiful, simplifying image to grasp, which offers to us much that is of value in Catholic faith… ‘A wise elder, which carpenter could mean, or a great engineer, an architekton, which in the Greek does not mean carpenter. But carpenter in the Hebrew could mean a wise man…’ His Grace turns the pages of his Bible back and forth, as if to itemize the paucity of information. Then he says: ‘What I think I can say to you with confidence is that it is of profound significance that we simply don’t know what Jesus was doing for most of his earthly life. There are some very different possibilities. One idea cherished by the Church is that Jesus worked with his father Joseph as a carpenter. Another possibility is that Jesus lived and prayed and studied closely with John the Baptist. They were cousins, and very close, almost the same, in age. Luke’s Gospel tells us clearly that Jesus and John knew each other from within the womb before they were born. So there may have been something quite important happening there. You see, we don’t know – it is an impossible mystery to us – just how much Jesus had to learn. This is because, if Jesus knew everything, humanly speaking, even as a tiny baby, then how can we say he is fully human? We simply can’t probe too far into this mystery, but we can draw extraordinary truth and healing from this thought, which becomes of immense relevance in our own lives. Jesus came to know and to understand himself not merely as a son of God, but as God the Son, and so as self-identical with his Father. It is not an adoptive relationship. Jesus is God. Now so much is hidden here. But this is a great gift. If you think about it, how do we come to know that we are loved by God, that we have our relationship with God? What are we born with in here’ – his chest – ‘and what do we have to learn? This is to say, what is gifted to us by other Christians at our baptism? ‘Jesus must have studied, and experienced profound revelation about who and what he truly was, and, so it seems to be, these studies cannot have been confined to the Semitic world. But this is the important point: there is a hiddenness about all of this. No matter which schools and which sects our Lord might have encountered all these years, this to us is as a desert space. What this means is that we can enter into the hidden life of Jesus, and there we can discover our own being with God, our own sonship. Our own particular being loved by God can come to us, if we can enter within this great unknown – into this desert space, where we are loved by Jesus. I firmly believe that there may be a great Lenten mystery in this period of our Lord’s life.’ A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 1 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 2 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 3 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 4 | King James Audio Bible | KJV A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 5 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Holy Week | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 6
