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A man has been deaf, maybe his entire life. But then something happens. He meets
Jesus. He can’t quite believe it. Years of silence have been broken. For the first time ever, he’s hearing things, small things, little noises. Breathing. Laughing. The emotion is overwhelming. It must have been a shock. He met Jesus. It was an encounter with the living God!
Because Jesus touched him, shared his humanity and divinity with him—the man’s ears were opened and his tongue was freed.
“Here is your God,” Isaiah writes. “He comes to save you… Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the
deaf be cleared…” Here is your God.
Here is our salvation, told in the story of one man—a story so amazing that the people who witnessed it just couldn’t
keep it to themselves. Whether we realize it or not, his story is our story.
To all of us who feel isolated, cut off, living in silence…Christ reaches out.
To all of us who feel lonely or different, damaged or confused, to all of us who struggle to understand…Christ bends
down and touches us.
To all of us who have closed ourselves off from love, from change, from the possibility of miracles…Christ calls out:
“Ephatha! Be opened.”
This miracle teaches us that an encounter with Christ brings something we all need: Clarity. It brings understanding.
What was uncertain becomes clear.
Everything suddenly make sense!
And after letting Christ into our lives, we are finally able to express something that we could never quite put into words.
We are made new. So, with this miracle on our minds, we ask ourselves: What does this gospel say about us? What kind of deafness hangs over us?
Do we tune out what God is telling us, and listen instead to the noise and voices of the world around us?
Change is hard. We can become comfortable in the midst of our own deafness – whether physical or spiritual. But
Christ calls out to each of us: “Ephatha! Be opened!” Let Jesus in. Because if we do… the result may be nothing short of a miracle.
Fr. Tony