Ephphatha! Be opened!

REFLECTIONS TODAY Gospel • Mark 7:31-37 Among the different senses, the sense of hearing is oftentimes taken for granted. We do not consider it as important as the sense of sight or taste. But come to think of it, without hearing, even our speech can be affected.

Unable to hear and speak, we would be living in complete isolation from others. Could that be the case with the person we have in today’s Gospel? The evangelist describes him as a “deaf man who had a speech impediment” (v 32). Hence it is understandable why he could not approach Jesus on his own.



His condition is truly dreadful. But there is a positive note in the story: Some people take notice of Jesus passing by, and they bring the deaf man to Jesus. The presence of Jesus at this precise moment brings to fulfillment the prophecy we hear in the First Reading: “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing” (vv 5-6).

Mark takes pains to describe the healing process down to its minute details. Jesus takes the deaf man away from the crowd perhaps so that he can give his total attention to him. Then Jesus touches the man’s ears and his tongue, while taking a prayerful stance of looking up to heaven and groaning, “Ephphatha!” (Be opened!) (v 34).

Why is the original Aramaic word used here? A biblical scholar says that when the evangelist chose to use the Aramaic words (Jesus’ mother tongue), it could signal a deliberate endeavor to highlight the “intimacy of the moment and the personal relationship of Jesus with the one with whom he is communicating.” For instance, we hear such expressions in Jesus’ address to the Father, his “Abba” (Mk 14:36), at the moment of his death. We hear it also when he raises the young girl in Capernaum from her deathbed as he says, “Talitha koum” (Mk 5:41).

We are therefore invited to contemplate Jesus’ act of liberating the person from his infirmity as a very intimate action. As a way of deepening this Gospel, we can recall our Ephphatha experiences in life. From our Baptism, we have actually been touched with the grace of the sacrament as the priest signed our ears and mouth with the cross and proclaimed Ephphatha.

But for sure, in our life’s journey, there have been and perhaps there still are many things that have blocked us from attentively hearing God’s Word in our lives. Sin and selfishness might have obstructed our listening capacity. It is not too late for us to ask Jesus to come and lay his hands on us to touch us so that he could whisper to our very depths, “Ephphatha!” May our Blessed Mother, the great exemplar of listening to God’s Word, whom we remember in a special way today—her birthday—intercede for us for this grace of spiritual healing.

Source: “366 Days with the Lord 2024,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd.

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