SOURCE: Vatican News – English
23rd Sunday of Year B
The Liberator
One of God’s attributes is “the liberator”. This is the attribute which this Sunday’s liturgical texts especially focus on. God frees all human beings from their sad condition of outcasts, and he frees nature from its barren dryness (first reading). He frees us from illnesses of the heart and of the spirit, “everything he does is good, he makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” (Gospel). He frees the Christian from any distinctions of class, for whether we are rich or poor, we are all the same before God (Gospel).
P. Antonio Izqeuirdo, L.C., Copyright © Dicastery for the Clergy
Catechism Cross-References
Catechism
Cross-References
23rd Sunday of Year B
Doctrinal Messages
23rd Sunday of Year B
Pastoral Suggestions
Pope Francis
“Be opened!”
5 September 2021 | Saint Peter’s Square
We all have ears, but very often we are not able to hear. Why is this? Brothers and sisters, there is an interior deafness that we can ask Jesus to touch and heal today. It is interior deafness, which is worse than physical deafness, because it is the deafness of the heart.Taken up with haste, by so many things to say and do, we do not find time to stop and listen to those who speak to us. We run the risk of becoming impervious to everything and not making room for those who need to be heard. I am thinking about children, young people, the elderly, the many who do not really need words and sermons, but to be heard. Let us ask ourselves: how is my capacity to listen going? Do I let myself be touched by people’s lives? Do I know how to spend time with those who are close to me in order to listen? This regards all of us, but in a special way also priests. The priest must listen to people, not in a rushed way, but listen and see how he can help, but after having listened. And all of us: first listen, then respond. Think about family life: how many times do we talk without listening first, repeating the same things, always the same things! Incapable of listening, we always say the same things, or we do not let the other person finish talking, expressing themselves, and we interrupt them. Starting a dialogue often happens not through words but silence, by not insisting, by patiently beginning anew to listen to others, hearing about their struggles and what they carry inside. The healing of the heart begins with listening. Listening. This is what restores the heart. “But Father, there are boring people who say the same things over and over again…” Listen to them. And then, when they have finished talking, you may speak, but listen to everything.
Meaning of Baptism
9 September 2012 | Castel Gandolfo
At the centre of today’s Gospel (Mk 7:31-37), there is a small but very important word. A word that — in its deepest sense — sums up Christ’s whole message and all his work. The Evangelist Mark records this word in the very language of Jesus in which Jesus spoke it so that we may hear it even more vividly. The word is “Ephphatha”, which means “be opened”. Let us look at the context in which it is used. Jesus was crossing the region known as Decapolis, between the coast of Tyre and Sidon and Galilee, hence an area that was not Jewish. They brought him a deaf-mute to be healed — evidently Jesus’ fame had spread that far. Jesus took him aside and touched his ears and his tongue and then, looking up to heaven, said with a deep sigh: “Ephphatha” which means “be opened”. Then the man immediately began to hear and to speak plainly (cf. Mk 7:35).
This, therefore is the historical and literal meaning of this word: thanks to Jesus’ intervention, the deaf-mute “was opened”; previously he had been closed, isolated, it had been very difficult for him to communicate. For him healing meant an “opening” to others and to the world, an opening which, starting with the organs of hearing and speech, involved his whole self and his life: he could at last communicate and thus relate in a new way.
However, we all know that a person’s closure and isolation do not only depend on the sense organs. There is an inner closure that affects the person’s inmost self, which the Bible calls the “heart”. It is this that Jesus came to “open”, to liberate, so as to enable us to live to the full our relationship with God and with others. This is why I said that this small word, “ephphatha — be opened”, sums up in itself Christ’s entire mission. He was made man so that man, rendered inwardly deaf and mute by sin, might be able to hear God’s voice, the voice of Love that speaks to his heart, and thus in his turn learn to speak the language of love, to communicate with God and with others. For this reason the word and the action of the “ephphatha” have been integrated into the Rite of Baptism as one of the signs that explain its meaning: the priest, touching the mouth and ears of the newly baptized person says: “ephphatha”, praying that he or she may soon hear the word of God and profess the faith. Through Baptism, the human person begins, so to speak, to breathe the Holy Spirit whom Jesus invoked from the Father with that deep sigh in order to heal the deaf-mute.