Humility and Healing - 11th Sunday post Pentecost (EF)

Homily for Old Saint John Church, Silver Spring, MD

Ephphetha

Can one be healed if one does not wish it?  Can the soul that is adamantly obstinate in its deafness and dumbness truly be healed?  This is a question that arises from our Mass today, observing the sacred workings of our blessed Lord in demonstrating His divinity through healing the deaf and dumb man.  For certainly, that man presented to Christ wanted to be healed, wanted to be freed from this muteness in which he had lived for so many years.  Yet what about the soul that does not wished to be freed?  What if there is a person who does not wish to receive hearing and speech?

Certainly, we would be flabbergasted that one would not desire these most important senses.  We would question one, saying, “Do you not want to hear the sounds of nature rolling about us, the birds and the bees and the trees and the wind?  Would you not want to hear the magnificent works of the great composers; Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and many more?  Why would you not want to have a voice with which to cry, to laugh, to shout, to sing, to rejoice?”  We cannot comprehend the idea that anyone would not want to communicate with the outside world by hearing and speaking, yet we are witnessing a society that is committing this grave error right now in desiring not to hear and not to speak with God.

We are bystanders and witnesses to the great forgetfulness of modernity.  Western society has become deaf and dumb about God and to God.  It is a page pulled right out of 1984: Sin is proclaimed to be good and good is proclaimed to be evil in a masterstroke of doublespeak.  Christians are constantly declared bigots, Luddites, and hate-mongers whilst the immoral elite are seen as truly open to others, more concerned with the whole person and far more right in understanding the needs of humanity.  We have seen this plague of spiritual amnesia grow and spread within our country and perhaps even our families, so that we feel that we are at times the only people remaining with a firm head on our shoulders.

Is there any hope for the world?  Is there a possibility of conversion for our society, to save it in time before its self-destruction is completed?  Our Lord confirms this possibility for us: “With God, all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)  Yet how can this be brought about?  How can our society be healed of its moral deafness and willful silence concerning God?  It is the same solution as when Christianity spread through the Roman Empire and throughout the whole world: there must be souls who bear witness to the centrality of Christ in their lives and souls who proclaim the triumph of Christ over sin and death.

There cannot be a vibrant and healthy Christianity without souls whose very being seems to radiate with the joy of Christ as their King and their Lord.  But for this to happen, these souls must be humbled from their proud and erroneous ways.  This is the example of Saint Paul in our epistle.  The great Apostle to the Gentiles, in writing to the Corinthians, declares that he is the least of the Apostles because he should not be an apostle due to his persecution of the Church.  The Corinthians may not know the whole story, but we are privileged to know it in reading the Acts of the Apostles: how Saul stood by, holding the coats of the stoners of Saint Stephen; how Saul, zealous for the God of hosts, rounded up Christians and sent them to the high council to be punished even with death; how he even obtained permission to go out to Damascus to pursue the Church of God there and destroy it.  Yet we are privy to the rest of the story: Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, his encounter with the risen Christ whom he was persecuting, his healing at the hands of a disciple, and his mission to the Gentiles.

The witness of Saint Paul shows us that, no matter our past or even present circumstances, we too are able to formed into the holy witnesses of Christ our crucified and resurrected King.  God is not a respecter of persons, but chooses those whom He wills to be His witnesses and His holy souls.  In this we must bow before the majesty of God and humble ourselves that He has chosen us to be with Him here and now, to adore Him in the most Holy Sacrifice, and to be nourished by His Son, by the Lord who has charge over both body and soul.  But if we are to be His witnesses, if we are to be His holy souls, His saints, we must seek to be continually healed in our souls, and in this we should reflect upon the Gospel.

How is it that Christ heals the deaf and dumb man?  First, He removes the man from the crowd.  In this, the sacred commentators see that we must remove ourselves from the noise and the crowds of this world which drown out the voice of Christ speaking through His Church.  How can we hear Christ if our ears are not attuned to His voice?  Next, the Lord places His fingers in the ears of the man and spits upon the man’s tongue.  The commentators see in this the gifts of the Holy Spirit enlightening the soul so as to begin to hear and proclaim the Word.  Our Lord then groans in prayer to His Father, and utters a word still used in our liturgy today: Ephphetha, be opened.  At every baptism, the priest prays this divine command upon the recipient, beseeching God to open their ears and mouth so as to hear the Word of God and to proclaim it always upon their lips.

So it must be the same with us.  We must be separated from sin and all wickedness so as to hear Christ speak to us, to be more open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  We must receive and bring to fruition the gifts of the Spirit so that our lives may reflect the triumph of Christ our King.  And we must be opened by the grace of God to be what we are meant to be: sinners mindful of our past, as was Saint Paul, yet hopeful that God’s grace will not be voided in us by our deafness or silence.  Our ears and our mouths must not be closed to God by sin but must be opened to proclaim His praise continually upon our lips.

Let us pray that we may be humbled as was Saint Paul so as to be true witnesses to the glory and the reign of Christ.  Let us be healed by the divine Physician so that our ears may hear and our lips may proclaim the Word.  Let us go forward and proclaim in all things our thanks to God for the victory won for us through Christ.  Let us serve God in His Church through obedience and humility, desiring to increase the kingdom through the conversion of souls and of society.  May our ears be opened and our lips be separated by Christ so as to hear Him, to praise Him, and to glorify Him in everything.