Jesus
was in a region – the Decapolis, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee – where
a sizeable Jewish population lived; they were, however, influenced by the alien
culture prevalent in those 10 cities (‘Decapolis’ is a Greek word meaning ten
towns or cities) whose citizens lived in a Greek-style society with Greco-Roman
government, and whose laws and religious beliefs – especially when taken
together with their moral standards and practices -- were regarded by devout
Israelites as ‘heathen‘.
There
was sufficiently close contact between Jews and Greeks to support business
activities and also to enable the ‘Greeks’ to acquire some awareness of and
acquaintance with Jewish customs and religious practices. Jesus had recently healed the daughter of a
pagan Syro-Phoenician woman who, you will remember, had said that even the dogs
were allowed to eat scraps from the children’s table. On that occasion Jesus
had healed her daughter at a distance, her mother having come alone to beseech Jesus’
help.
Here,
however, there was a crowd of expectant people, including numerous Jews, who:
brought
to Jesus one who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged Him to lay
His hand on him. (Mark
7:32)
Jesus,
you will notice, did not seek out this man any more than He had sought out the woman
whose daughter He had healed despite His
initial unwillingness to do any such healing for a Gentile. On this occasion, however, it was a crowd, probably
most of them members, by birth, of the Chosen People, who “begged” Him to lay
His hand on this deaf and dumb man.
People
of God, recognize that this episode might well have brought a certain joy to
the heart of Jesus. The pagan woman had
come to Him for the sake of her natural daughter; here, however, there is a
crowd of people united in the faith of Israel asking for the healing of a
fellow Jew. They did not, most probably,
observe their faith with sufficient care -- living and working, as they did, side
by side with pagans -- but for all that, they still kept firm hold of a most
important characteristic of their Jewish background, their faithful care for
each other.
On
this occasion Jesus willed not only to speak words of healing, but also to use
His own human flesh to touch the man, and so we are told that Jesus:
took him aside from the crowd
privately,
because
– having deemed it necessary to use His own body in order to save this man’s
‘Jewish’ soul -- Jesus did not want any noise from the excited pagan onlookers to
disturb the mute man’s close attention to Jesus’ every word, whisper, gesture
or touch. Jesus then … first of all:
put
His finger into his ears, and after spitting,
touched his tongue, and looking up to heaven He sighed ….
Jesus wanted the
deaf-mute man’s faith to grow step by step as He – Jesus, famous in all
Galilee across the water -- did what the
half-pagan Jew could ‘faithfully’ relate
to: he could see Jesus spitting, and then feel Him touching his own tongue with
that saliva; ‘magical saliva?’ No, not
really, for Jesus was now coaxing this man
--- in His own most wonderful way as Perfect God and Perfect Man – trying
to draw him closer to His Father by looking up to heaven as He sighed deeply, encouraging, urging -- by the very depth of that
sigh from His own most Sacred Heart -- the
mute man first of all to relax and then open himself up for healing by looking up with Jesus
hopefully in a heavenward glance
-- being a Jew by birth, he remembered that heaven was said to be God’s home -- and then to rest, if only for an
instant, expectantly in Jesus' arms as:
Jesus said to him, ‘EPHPHATHA’
in Aramaic, the common language
understood well enough by both pagans and Jews present.
Then, all of a sudden,
everyone around him was speaking to him as Jesus had just done, in Aramaic, and
he was hearing them, he was cured!
His ears were opened, his tongue released, and he
spoke plainly.
People
of God, we should try our best to appreciate that Jesus still uses human
nature: we Catholics do not pray to a God who is just “up there”: we pray to,
we turn to, we love, a God Who is with us also here on earth, a God Who is
with us in His own flesh and blood in the Eucharist; indeed, in so far as we
are true disciples of Jesus, in so far as we live in His Body by His Spirit, we
are all “flesh of His flesh, blood of His Blood”. Because Our Blessed Lord deliberately continues
to use His Body for mankind’s salvation through the instrumentality of His
Church -- His Mystical Body -- He thus ALSO deigns to use our flesh, to use us,
His disciples, in His work of redemption even today. Our Christian vocation in Mother Church is
therefore clear: as loving and obedient disciples of Jesus, the Son of God made
flesh for men, we are called to become, each in our degree, willing instruments
for His continuing work of salvation: by our Catholic prayer and worship, by our
Christian living and loving, by the very way “we live and move and have our spiritual
being” in Him.
That
“sighing deeply”, also expressed the deep compassion felt by Jesus all mankind
suffering so much under the burden of sin, as St. Paul tells us:
We
know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth
until now. And not only the creation,
but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we
wait eagerly waiting for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our
weakness. For we do not know what we to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit
Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8:22-26)
His
sighing deeply is indeed also the result of His immense indignation that His
Father’s creation, originally so good and so beautiful, should have become so
deformed and ugly, thanks to the Devil’s lies and our complicity. This is why, People of God, we should, indeed
why we must, hate sin for dishonouring the Father of glory, for bringing
such sorrow to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and for the degradation and grief, the
pain and loss, it continues to bring about in the lives of all men and women, children,
and even those still in their mother’s womb.
Make
no mistake about it, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to HATE
SIN; but also, as Christians, we must still love the sinner; that
is, we must convict sin (‘do
good-ers’ cannot do that) yet without condemning the sinner.
Jesus
does indeed will that we, His People, share in His saving work for the whole
world, but we can only do this by learning to ‘love the sinner’ as Christ
loved us, it does not, as St. Paul tells us explicitly tells us, mean
our cosying-up to sinners:
Do
not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness
with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? (2 Corinthians 6:14-15)
That
true wisdom which alone can wholeheartedly convict the sin whilst lovingly
restrain from condemning our sinning neighbour requires us to have both sincerity
of heart and an enlightened and humble mind.
That is, hatred of the sin and love for the sinner demands our being
wilfully subject to the Holy Spirit of Truth and Love, the only means whereby
that most beautiful vision and prophecy of Isaiah, heard in the first reading,
can come to true fulfilment:
Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God (hating and destroying sin); He will come and save you." Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame man shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it. (Isaiah 35:4-8)
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