Homily for Sunday, 9 September 2018

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. 

When is the last time any of us have attended a baptism? Have any of us ever noticed a strange part of the baptismal ritual, after the baptism itself, when the deacon or priest prays over the newly-baptized person while touching her or his ears and mouth? The deacon’s or priest’s prayer over the newly-baptized at this point in the ritual is this: “The Lord Jesus made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”

This part of the Rite of Baptism is known by a strange word: “Ephphatha.” We hear this originally-Aramaic word, ephphatha, translated for us as “be opened,” with the accompanying gestures from Jesus toward the deaf and mute man—Jesus puts “his fingers into [the man’s] ears” and touches his tongue—today in Mark’s Gospel.

Is it not remarkable that this Gospel event of which we hear today, Jesus’ restoration of hearing and speech to the deaf and mute man, “Ephphatha,” “Be opened,” was integrated in a set ritual of Baptism very early in the Church’s history, as early as the 600s? This was just as the Church was expanding beyond the geographical limits of the former Roman Empire north and west into then-pagan territories of Europe. The ephphatha has always had a double focus: First, to “open” the newly-baptized to God’s grace against sin. This is why, until it was moved in the baptismal ritual to after the baptism itself after Vatican II fifty years ago, the ephphatha introduced the renunciation of sin and profession of faith at the very beginning of the Rite. Second, the ephphatha held (and more dominantly today holds, especially since Vatican II) the significance of a call to the newly-baptized to spread our Christian faith in word and action, what we might call evangelization.

How, then, might we accomplish this, if at the heart of Jesus’ command to the deaf and mute man, “Be opened,” and at the heart of our calling as baptized Christians is evangelization, spreading the good news of Jesus Christ? Our Gospel and baptismal call to “be opened,” ephphatha, presents us with challenges both in the Gospel account of Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man itself and in the world in which we live. In Mark’s Gospel, as soon as Jesus heals the deaf and mute man, commanding him to “be opened,” he orders the crowds “to tell no one” about the healing. Do these two commands not contradict each other? And in our world today, how do we evangelize; spread the good news of the truth and beauty of our faith in Jesus Christ, while honouring the human beauty and dignity of those people to whom we communicate our faith; the dignity of people of other faiths; people who differ or disagree with us; people who may be resistant to our Christian message, even when proclaimed lovingly and reasonably? Is evangelization not out of place in a world as pluralistic as ours is in terms of faiths, cultures, politics, and worldviews?

Let me suggest that our response to these questions and challenges presented by our Gospel and our world might begin best with our attentiveness to the order of Jesus’ actions in healing the man in our Gospel reading today. This order of actions, by which Jesus touches the man’s ears and then his tongue, is reflected in the order of the ephphatha in our Rite of Baptism: “May [God] soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith”…

As in Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man in Mark’s Gospel, and from the moment of our baptism, Jesus opens our ears to hear before he opens our mouths to speak. If our evangelization, our proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, “to the praise and glory of God the Father,” is to be effective, it must be heard attentively before we are able to speak it with any authority. And if we are hearing God’s word attentively, it will become something heartfelt before we ever speak a word.

This is the message of the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading, of which Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man may have reminded the crowds following him in our Gospel reading today. For Isaiah and for Jesus, the word of God is a message to be taken to heart. Isaiah’s first address today is to “those who are of a fearful heart.” Only then does Isaiah proclaim that “the eyes of the blind shall be opened… the ears of the deaf unstopped,” that “the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.”

If we remain “of a fearful heart,” we risk becoming paralyzed; closed in on ourselves by our fears. We risk closing our hearts to the Word of God and its invitation to us to “be opened.” When I speak of fear in this way, I speak not of fear as a legitimate response to the unfamiliar and even terrifying, but when we allow fear to take over our other senses so that we are attentive to nothing but our fear, which ends up destroying us from within. It will not matter, then, what we sense with our eyes and ears; the actions and words we communicate will be joyless, faithless, and meaningless, self-centered instead of God-centered.

Do most or all of us not know people who are so overtaken by fear in this way; people who are afraid to move beyond limited situations in which they are comfortable? Pope Francis has often lamented the number of Christians who are like this: “Like Lent without Easter,” Francis describes them in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium; with “faces like pickled peppers,” he said in an audience within his first months as pope. But the symptoms of fear that has taken over the heart and closed it off to God’s presence, closed us off to effective and joyful evangelization, can be more subtle.

From the moment Jesus enters into the pagan territories between Tyre and Sidon and the ten cities “of the Decapolis,” Jesus leads by example as to what he will mean in commanding the deaf and mute man to “be opened.” Before he heals the man the crowds bring before him or even speaks a word in today’s Gospel, Jesus actively shows us the true meaning of evangelization; of proclaiming the presence and good news of the Word of God in person, but in a strange land, not among his own people. There, we witness the healing of the deaf and mute man: “Ephphatha,” “Be opened,” ears first, to hear the Word of God attentively, and only then the tongue, to proclaim this Word of God with joy.

But all this presupposes an encounter of hearts between Jesus and the man, before any opening of his other senses is able to take place. “Jesus took him aside in private,” Mark’s Gospel says. Jesus takes the deaf and mute man aside, away from the noise of the crowds, away from his fears, but also possibly away from his comfort in the support of friends among the crowds who had brought him to Jesus. “Ephphatha”—“Be opened”: This invitation is effective only if a heart-to-heart with God takes place first. Only then will our efforts at evangelization be effective. These heart-to-heart encounters take several forms: Private prayer, examination of conscience, public worship, the celebration of Eucharist other sacraments, particularly the so-called sacraments of healing, reconciliation and the anointing of the sick, spiritual direction, even more informal private conversation about matters of faith, and so forth.

We encounter God heart-to-heart in the love of one another. We encounter God heart-to-heart in any moment that moves us beyond ourselves. We may even encounter God heart-to-heart, in ways in which our hearts are opened to deeper truths about our own faith, through encounters with people of other faiths or Christians who struggle with teachings of our own faith. To open our hearts is often discomforting. But this is necessary for any evangelization we do to be any more than mere noise; the mere noise of the crowds that Jesus orders to silence (albeit unsuccessfully) in today’s Gospel.

Evangelization, proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, requires us first to open our hearts to this good news. With our hearts open, we are then able to have our ears opened to hear God’s Word attentively, and only then to have our mouths opened to proclaim it, not for our own comfort or glory but, according to our baptismal calling, “to the praise and glory of God the Father.”