Listening is difficult. It's hard to sit and pay attention as someone tries to tell you something. A distinction that I've made several times over the years in this regard is that between hearing and listening. We hear lots of noise. So noisy is our society that silence seems strange to many people. Not only strange, silence fr many is uncomfortable, discomforting. If you're not deaf, hearing is inevitable. Listening, however, requires effort. Listening is intentional, highly intentional.
While God's second language is either Hebrew or Yiddish, silence is God's first language. We can hear God amid the noise in which we live but to really listen to God requires silence.
To show you that silence is not easy thing, set the timer on your phone (a major source of noise and distraction) for three minutes. Then, set your phone down. Sit in comfortable and relaxed position. Take a deep breath- breathe in until your lungs are filled and then exhale slowly. Now, take another deep breath. Close your eyes. Then sit, eyes closed, breathing slowly until your timer goes off.
When it comes to listening, it seems that it's difficult for many to just sit and listen to God's word proclaimed at Mass. A lot of folks feel they need to read along. Well, reading and listening are two very different ways of perceiving. It's important to listen to the word of God proclaimed out loud in the midst of the assembly.
Even when the lector is not doing a great job proclaiming the scriptures (lectors, you need to do your work and not just show up and read out loud when you are scheduled), this is a chance to listen more closely. I encourage you to read the readings before coming to Mass on Sunday. This way you can listen better, more intently.
Since we are in Year B of the Sunday lectionary, now in the second week of our return to the Gospel of Mark after our four week sojourn through the Bread of Life Discourse in Saint John's Gospel, disrupted for our celebration of the Blessed Virgin's Assumption, which landed on a Sunday this year, I urge you to set aside two hours this week and listen to the Gospel of Mark proclaimed in its entirety out loud. You can do this by clicking here. My reason for urging this is to demonstrate the difference between listening and reading.
An important feature of pericopes (i.e., distinct episodes) in the Gospels wherein Jesus makes the blind see and the deaf hear is to show that most of us, most of the time are blind and deaf toward God and towards one another. We're easily distracted and very forgetful. Listening to God is not without risk. Taking the deaf man away from the crowd is akin to leading him into silence, where Jesus literally plugs himself into him.
As the Christian spiritual master, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, at the very beginning of Beginning to Pray, notes: prayer is a bit like entering a lion's den. This brings to my mind what C.S. Lewis wrote about Aslan: "He is not a tame lion." It also causes me to remember when the late ragamuffin Rich Mullins said during a concert: "God is a wild man...should you encounter him...hang on for dear life-or let go for dear life is a better way to say it."
When you listen to the Lord, what do you hear? Well, I can't say what you hear. What I hear God say to me is usually between me and God. Sometimes I share something I've heard God say to me. What God says to the Church in scripture by way of moral exhortation is very different from what I hear a lot of Christians say and strongly assert.
As with last week's second reading, this week's is also taken from the Letter of Saint James. Last week we heard that religion that is pure and undefiled largely consists of caring for the poorest among us- the widows and orphans in the societal context of James's letter.
This week, we are reminded that God does indeed show partiality. As Jesus himself demonstrated over and again, doing so in today's Gospel, God is partial toward "those who are poor in the world." As followers of Jesus, we should be too.
Jesus's command, Ephphatha!, an Aramaic word (really, because Jesus spoke it, Aramaic would be a good candidate for God's second language), as the text itself indicates, does not mean "Hear!" It means, "Be opened!" Because episodes handed on in the Gospels are not just recording something someone remembers Jesus doing, a series of "one-offs," as it were, that don't seek to communicate something divine, that is, say something to us, the point of our Gospel today is for our ears, our hearts, our lips to be opened.
Let's not forget the Ephphatha rite in the baptism of infants. During this rite, the one presiding making the Sign of the Cross over the ears and mouth of the child, says:
The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak.Too often, Christians want to be closed-off. Jesus was open, especially to those outside of his society and society's various circles. Today's Gospel taking place in the Decapolis, outside Israel, is indicative of this.
May he soon touch your ears to receive his word,
and your mouth to proclaim his faith,
to the praise and glory of God the Father
Today's Gospel is about the need to listen to God. As Pope Francis has asserted several times, God is a God of surprises. You can't effectively listen if you think you already know what God is going to say to you. Don't let what I wrote above deter you. Take to heart these words from our first reading from Isaiah:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you
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