Mark 7:31-37
1 The healing of the deaf-mute provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the importance of communication in our lives. The healing touch of Jesus brought the man from isolation into community. Who have been the people who touched you when you felt isolated and alone and helped you to come out of painful aloneness? For whom have you done this?
2 Deafness is symbolic of being unable to hear what is being said to us. What a difference when our ears are opened! Perhaps you can recall a time when your ears were opened and you heard in a new way that you were loved – by God or by another person. 3 Words are not the only form of communication. Actions can speak louder than words. Recall times when this was brought home to
you. 4 Being able to say what is in you is the other side of communication. Perhaps there have been occasions when you have struggled to find words to express what is deepest in you – your faith, your values, your love. Then something changed and you found the words. What was it like to be able to express your deepest self?
John Byrne OSA
Email john@orlagh.ie
Questions people ask
Q. Somewhere in the Bible it says ‘Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.’ How can a God of love harbour thoughts of revenge?
A. This saying dates from an early part of the Old Testament when morality was at a primitive stage of development, far short of the morality of love preached by Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. Old Testament morality advanced and we find Isaiah in today’s Mass speaking of God’s vengeance coming, not with punishment, but with healing for the blind, deaf, lame etc. God wants the destruction of sin but the healing of the sinner. St Paul tells people to let go of vengeance: ‘Do not be mastered by evil, but master evil with good’ (Rom 12:21).
Fr Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap
Email silvesteroflynn@gmail.com
The Deep End
One for All
Today’s Gospel reading (Mark 7:31-37) contains a string of strange things. For starters, how could someone deaf from birth, presumably, be able to speak at all, even with an impediment? There were no books then, no special-needs teaching. Nothing. So how did he pick up a language? No answer is given. Not one for theatricals, Jesus nevertheless uses gestures common at the time to Greek and Jewish healers. Why? No reason is given. Equally strange, he imposes silence on the crowd after the healing. Could he really expect them to keep quiet about such an extraordinary thing? No explanation is given.
There are no answers to these questions. Yet, asking them helps us focus on the text to grasp its style and purpose. It’s penned not as a report for a newspaper, but for the purpose of teaching. It tells us that lots of good things happen when we’re close to Jesus. We become whole and free in a way we’ve never been before. Our damaged humanity is healed.
It also tells us important things about Jesus in an indirect way. The crowds proclaim that he has ‘done everything well’ (v. 37). This is reminiscent of Gen 1:31: ‘God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good.’ There’s at least a linkage with God’s divine action here. And because the healing occurs in the Gentile region, east of Jordan, it tells us that the Gentiles previously deaf and dumb to God can now hear and respond to him.
Jesus is for all, not just the chosen few.
Fr Tom Cahill SVD, Divine Word Missionaries, Donamon, Co Roscommon
Email tomcee@svdireland.com
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