Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time-B
Our culture and worldwide is filled with much disinformation and blatant falsehoods. The Communist regimens are based upon lies, and what we loosely call democratic countries are not much better. Always after the fact, the citizens learn the narrative is anything but the truth. Unfortunately, the constant barrage of untruths erodes the culture and takes a toll on those who put their trust in governments and culture.
For those who believe that abortion is healthcare, their decision has an effect on them and is not one of healing; rather, it turns out to be a spiritual and psychological burden throughout their life. The gender fluidity nonsense also has the potential of irreversible damage based on the false premise that human beings can change their gender on a whim. Many examples show how deaf a person can become to the truth and common sense. This happens when a person is left to his designs; he will always take the wrong path because he is never the source or promulgator of the truth. There are a lot of spiritually deaf people in the world, and it is as devastating, if not more, than physical deafness.
The separation of humanity from its creator, a consequence of sin, is our existential crisis. It is a crisis of being unable to hear and act on the truth. But God, in His infinite love for the world, would not let this stand. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This divine intervention we desperately need is a beacon of hope in our existential crisis of deafness.
St. Mark recalls when the Son of God encountered a physically deaf individual. The crowd around this disabled man pleaded with Jesus to lay hands on him and heal his infirmity. Centuries earlier, Isaiah (which happens to be the first reading for today) prophesied this encounter when he told the faithful, “Here is your God… he comes to save you. Then the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf cleared.”
Isaiah’s prediction could only be achieved by God, and as our tradition affirms, it was Jesus who could only fulfill the prophecy. When meeting with the deaf man, Jesus “put his finger into the man’s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him. ‘Ephphatha!’ Be opened!”
Take notice of Jesus’ actions here. As the Son of God, he could have used his words to open the ears of the deaf man, but he chose to physically touch the man while imploring God’s power in the healing. The action of touch is the precursor of how people today are both physically and spiritually healed through the sacraments.
Each of the seven sacraments employs the words and touch referred to in theology as form and matter. In baptism, the matter is water, and the form is, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “The Sacrament of Reconciliation follows a similar way, with the auricular confession of sin as the matter and the absolution by a priest as the form. In the Eucharist, the bread is transubstantiated by the words of consecration, and so on with the other four sacraments.
So unappreciated in a secular society is the intersection of the human-divine encounter found in the sacraments. Even baptized Catholics who have strayed from the faith prefer blindness and are deaf to the truth. They fail to realize that the search for the truth cannot be found outside of a relationship with Truth itself. They erroneously think that separating from God allows them to be set free to experiment with different ways of existing without any constraints from God. Their self-enlightened dogma has produced the exact opposite. The secular philosophy is endowed with practices that are suicidal, whether it be individually or communally, by being blind and deaf to the reality that human progression can only be achieved through the creative action of God. When God is shoved out of the equation, blindness, and deafness can only lead to death.
Jesus’ mission was to save humanity from these ailments. By constantly healing us through his sacraments, a person can share the Truth with his eyes and ears opened. Then, the lies of secular culture are not believed but received as sheer lunacy. The killing of a mother’s baby in the womb is not healthcare, nor is the changing of one’s gender anything but mutilation.
The secular culture is now very blind and very deaf because they have chosen to separate themselves from God. No wonder many people are susceptible to the lies they are told daily. No wonder they believe humanistic ideology can bring a fullness of life. These blind and deaf individuals should be pitied because they are the exact replicas of Adam and Eve, who believed the lies of Satan and were banished from the garden. Their banishment would cause them to become blind and deaf to the Truth, and those disorders only ended in death. Only through Jesus’ salvation could this be reversed; human beings can be open to seeing and hearing the truth.
Thanks to Jesus and his gift of the sacraments, for only through them can we hear him speak to us, “Ephphatha!” Let your ears be open and live well here while anticipating the epitome of all life—eternal dwelling with God with our eyes and ears fully open.