A DETAILED PROCEDURE

Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Is. 35: 4 – 7/ Ps. 146/ Jas. 2: 1 – 5/ Mk. 7: 31 – 37

One of my unforgettable experiences during my hospital exposure was to witness a surgical procedure inside an operating room. Though my task was to pray during the entire procedure, I was also privileged to see how detailed and careful the doctors were. They were very particular with the instruments to be used and the steps to be followed. After more than two hours, the surgery was successful and the patient went out of the room in pain because of the wounds yet with joy in his heart for he was alive.

Our Gospel reading this Sunday is one of the detailed miracles stories in the Gospel of Mark (8:22-26 – the Cure of the Blind Man of Bethsaida; 9:14-29 – The Healing of the Boy with a Demoniac). Mark presented to us in a particular manner how this deaf mute was brought to and healed by Jesus.

“And people brought him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took off by himself away from the crowd.”

People went to Jesus and asked him to heal the deaf mute through the laying on of his hands. But this was not the case of Jesus. He does not simply heal a man and send him away. He took him away from the crowd because he did not want too much publicity on his miracles. But more importantly, Jesus wanted to meet him personally “cara a cara.”

In life, we too have our own share of infirmities. People around us would also provide a lot of solutions. Some are good while others are not. However, our Gospel is reminding us to go to Jesus. Yes, let us allow people to help us with our problems. But let us also allow Jesus to take us away from them in order to meet him in a more personal way. And this can happen in prayer. In our problems and shortcomings, we undergo a lot of processes and procedures but let us never disregard the power of prayer. It is in our prayer that we meet not just any human being but Jesus, the Great Physician.

“He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue.”

Jesus did not use words. Instead, Mark provided us with the detailed actions of Jesus. Well, Jesus’ actions are logical simply because the deaf mute cannot hear nor speak. When Jesus touched his ears and tongue, he was touching the deaf mute’s weakest points, the source of the curse of his life.

This is also true in our lives today. Jesus does not only meet us personally, he also touches our weakest and darkest selves. He meets us in our wounded selves in order to truly give us the healing which we badly need. Our challenge therefore is to allow Jesus to touch our weakest points. Let us neither be ashamed nor be afraid to present to Him our fallen humanity. Why? Because Pope Francis has reminded us that Jesus is the Misericordiae Vultus, the Face of Mercy! If we are not afraid to go to our loved ones every time we are sick, how much more to God who has created us and made us his own. God meets us where we are in order to bring us to where we should be.

He looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, Ephphatha! (that is, “Be opened”)

The deaf mute was not only physically cured. His healing gave him a new opening. He can finally live like an ordinary person without having ridiculed for his cursed infirmity. Jesus opened to him new life.

This is also the result if we meet God in prayer and allow him to touch our darkest and weakest selves – we gain new life with Him. We earn a deeper kind of joy that flows out from within.

My dear friends, whatever infirmity you are experiencing right now – physical, psychological, emotional, and even spiritual – the story of the deaf mute and Jesus challenges us to meet God in prayer and allow him to touch life’s weakest points. And by doing so, a new life has been opened to us.

And so, we pray these words from a Christian song: “Change my heart oh God, make it ever true, change my heart oh God, may I be like You. You are the potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me, this is what I pray.” Amen.

Photo taken from joyreceived.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/p_aurora_detail_full.jpg