23. Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B Mark 7,31-37

Parents are often amazed at how smart their children are – they know every car, learn how to set up a DVD player, TV, and computer better, and usually say: Mom, Dad, you have to do it this way. Children learn easier and faster because their brains and senses are fresh and open to new realities. That is why it is a cruel fate for a child to be deaf or dumb. Today, such disabled children are given special care so that they can find a way to earn a living and one day ensure their existence. The deaf and mute, about whom today’s Gospel tells us, belonged to the poorest people, and that is why Jesus took pity on him: he took him aside from the crowd, touched his ears and tongue with his fingers, but not like a doctor who touches a sick place to find out the cause of an illness. Jesus is making a touch here and is not examining anything, but merely suggesting that closed senses cause this wretched man’s misery. That’s why he says: Open up! And immediately, his ears were opened, and he loosed his bound tongue. In an instant, the disabled person became a healthy person who could listen to and talk to others.

The healing of a deaf person can also occur in our lives because often we are also “deaf and dumb,” so much so that we don’t even realize it. Recently, Professor Georges Bach at the Beverly Hills Institute of Group Psychotherapy stated that our well-being and health suffer greatly because we are deaf and blind to people and do not connect with them. Since establishing interpersonal contacts is a real problem, the professor organizes courses in his institute where the students can learn it. In the practical exercises, they have the task of talking to a stranger on the street, on a train, in a bus, in a shop, in front of a church… and starting a conversation with him. The professor says that a person who wants to start a conversation with people overcomes “torment” in himself because it seems everyone is out of his reach as if they have a sign on their chest with the inscription: No approach! He teaches his listeners how to overcome the fear of rejection, which he says is the most powerful emotion humans are capable of. Self-confident people come out of his courses, who joyfully announce with their lives that they got rid of their shells and communicate with the environment.

Something similar should happen to us here in the church. Jesus called us to the Holy Mass in seclusion, aside from other people. He touches our ear with his finger so that we listen to his word, he also touches our tongue during Holy Communion and says: Open up! By this, he wants to indicate that in order to be healthy people, our ears must be opened, and our language must be untied to communicate with other people. The successful post-Council theologian Luis Evely asks reproachfully: Have you ever invited a person to a fraternal meeting who received the sacrament of Jesus next to you? After all, St. Paul says that we who eat one bread should all be one body. The Dutch Catechism also comments on this problem: We do not know ourselves and are not interested in other people. There is much antipathy among us, between the great of this world and the simple people, between the learned and the common people, neighbors, and even between members of the same family.

Such poor, blind, lame, deaf, and dumb people are gathered before God. Wouldn’t it be better, asks the catechist, for everyone to go home right away? But Jesus didn’t want it that way, so he established community, unification, and rapprochement in the Holy Mass. Through his word and body, he patiently waits for us to become his brothers and sisters gradually. Let’s talk to each other! That the rules of decency do not allow you to speak and greet a stranger? That would be a sad testimony to our Christianity. The French writer Gilbert Cesbron writes that in Africa, an unknown child grabs your hand and says: Please take me to the other side of the street. Children’s behavior in Africa is evidence of their great trust in the help of adults. Jesus wants us to be like children about people. However, whoever wants to live isolated from people, wants to remain deaf and dumb to their needs and wants to shut himself up between four walls, let him realize that those four walls are called the tomb. Let us ask at this Holy Mass that, with the help of the Lord, we open ourselves to people and show them that Christianity makes us their brothers and sisters.