Be Opened! - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

Be Opened! - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon
Posted on 09/08/2024
Bishop BarronFriends, our Gospel for today is the evocative scene of Jesus healing a man who cannot hear and cannot speak. This man is beautifully symbolic of many in our culture today: we don’t listen to God, and therefore we can’t speak clearly about God. To us, as to him, Jesus says, “Ephphatha!”—be opened to the Word of God!

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GOSPEL

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mark 7:31–37

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals a deaf man who had a speech impediment.

Mark tells us that he took him “off by himself away from the crowd.” Jesus then “put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’—that is, ‘Be opened!’” Looking up to his Father and inserting his fingers into the man’s ears, Jesus establishes, as it were, an electrical current, literally plugging him into the divine energy, compelling him to hear the Word.

Now, let’s look at this healing in terms of its spiritual significance. The crowd is a large part of the problem. The raucous voices of so many, the insistent bray of the advertising culture, the confusing Babel of competing spiritualities—all of it makes us deaf to God’s word. And therefore, we have to be moved to a place of silence and communion.

Jesus draws us into his space, the space of the Church. There, away from the crowd, we can immerse ourselves in the rhythm of the liturgy, listen avidly to Scripture, study the theological tradition, watch the moves of holy people, take in the beauty of sacred art and architecture. There, we can hear.