Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

February 11, 2022

by Steve Pugliese, S.J.

"Ephphatha! Be Opened!"

Today’s Gospel passage from Mk 7 relates a somewhat unusual healing of Jesus. However, we realize that the gospel healing miracles, or “mighty works” as Jesus called them, are all unusual in the sense that no two are the same. Sometimes Jesus simply tells the person to stand, as with the paralyzed man lowered to him through the roof and the man at the pool of Bethsaida (or Bethesda, not the town of Bethsaida), or to stretch out their hand as he told the man with the withered hand in the synagogue. Other times he says simply that their faith has saved them as he told Bartimaeus in Jericho when he restored his vision. Other times a person need only touch his robe, as with the woman with the hemorrhage. Still others occur without the sick person even being there, as with the Roman centurion’s servant and the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter. One healing occurs after the sick have left him when Jesus told the ten lepers to go and show themselves to the priests and on the way, they found themselves healed. All the healing stories of Jesus in the gospel accounts are unique.

But today’s healing account is very much like two others in the gospels. The second occurs shortly after this in Mark 8:22-26 when Jesus restores the sight of the blind man in the town of Bethsaida. That healing is the most unusual in all the gospels in that Jesus had to anoint the man’s eyes twice before he could see completely. Finally, in John 9 there is the man who was born blind. All three of these healings share the detail of the Lord using his own saliva to anoint the men seeking healing. The two in Mark also share that Jesus took both men away from the crowds before he healed them.

What makes today’s passage very different from the other two that share the detail of anointing with the Lord’s spittle, is Jesus looking up to heaven and emitting a “deep sigh” (or groan, in our translation) and saying the Aramaic word Ephphatha, followed immediately by the evangelist supplying its meaning, “be opened!” It is the only time that word is used in the gospels, a word from the Lord’s own language (other times Jesus spoke Aramaic in the gospels are his “Eli eli lema sabachthani” from the cross and “Talitha koum” when he raised the daughter of Jairus in Mk 5). Surely, this is the most intimate healing account we have in all the gospels.

Many modern Protestant theologians, in what is known as “Liberal Theology,” contend that the healing miracles of Jesus as described in the gospels are at best metaphors or a way the evangelists used to describe Jesus’ effect on people. But I very much believe they are describing what actually occurred. Why else would there be such a variety and why are the gospels so full of them? Both Mark and John say that Jesus performed many other healings not explicitly recorded in the gospels. I’m certain that every one of those healed people spoke of nothing else except that day with everyone they ever met for the rest of their lives. What a crowd of witnesses they must have been! Their stories must have led so many to believe in Christ in those early apostolic times.

Jesus still continually heals today but only very rarely physically. The healing of Jesus available to all of us now is Christ’s power to heal our hearts. That is what we ought to pray for when we encounter illness and physical distress. If our hearts were healed of fear and dread, if we could be released from anger, judgement and pride and meekly come to accept everything in the joy of the Spirit, not bemoaning our suffering or loss but rather using it as a witness to others to what true faith can bear gladly with Christ, it would affect others as powerfully as the blind being given sight or the deaf hearing. For if your hearts are healed and surrendered to God’s love and will, everything becomes joy no matter what. Meeting illness, suffering and even death with God given joy is a witness very few can resist. Why do we pray for miracles of bodily healing, which is ultimately somewhat selfish and fear based, when by accepting everything with the peace, joy and love of Christ would actually be the very greatest healing of all? And it is available to all of us if we would only truly believe it and seek it with all our hearts. “Courage daughter! Your faith has made you well!”