JESUS HEALS A DEAF-MUTE MAN

Today’s Gospel Reading: Mark 7:31-37 – Friday, 9 February 2018

Helen Keller [1880-1968] was blind, deaf, and dumb. In The Story of My Life, she tells how her inability to communicate with people triggered violent fits of temper.

One day a Miss Fuller devised a way to teach Helen to talk. She put Helen’s hand to her face to feel the position of her lips and tongue  when she spoke a word to Helen.. Helen then tried to duplicate the positions and say the same word. After long practice, Helen learned to speak. Her joy was unbounded. She wrote later: “I used to repeat ecstatically, ‘I am not dumb now’.”

This story gives us some insight into how the deaf and dumb man in today’s Gospel reading must have felt when Jesus healed him

The healing of the deaf-mute man is a parable in action. Not only does Jesus enable us to hear God’s Word, but to hear it as addressed to us. He enable us to hear the sounds of the poor and needy, and to be attuned to the difficulties of our fellow human beings. The people in the Gospel reading remarked upon how completely Jesus fulfilled the prophesies of healing the deaf and the mute found in Isaiah (35:5), The deeper meaning of that old prophecy of Isaiah was more than a prediction of mended auricular problems.

The Messiah would enable people to deal with each other on a more sensitive level and would make us aware of the fragile web of relationships and respect that hold a community together. To hear and speak on this level is a sign of the era of the Messiah.

Many times we are deaf to the sounds of oppression and discontent around us. In this case  our disability is not in our ears but in our hearts.

Jakarta, 9 February 2018

A Christian Pilgrim