The Twenty-third Sunday of the Year, B

            It was C. S. Lewis, I believe, who once made the point that those who doubted the historicity of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’s Gospels and called them early Christian fables, made-up stories, just did not know what they were talking about.  Yes, these so-called scholars were often quite gifted linguists and masters of Greek and Hebrew, but they were lacking in understanding of literature; and that was the very area of human activity that Lewis, a fellow at Oxford, knew so well.  The Gospels, Lewis, insisted, are anything but fables; they have none of the marks of such stories, but all the marks of writing that is flowing from first-hand experience. 

            Yet, Lewis would agree, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not mere biography, simple attempts of a journalistic kind.  They are rather theological reflections on the marvelous life, teaching and mission of Jesus Christ, written under the authority of those who really did know Him, walk with Him, and observe Him.  And this is how we should read them; this is how we should read today’s Gospel:  yes, as an event that really happened, but in the mind of the earliest followers of Christ, who had come together to be formed into His Church on earth, these happenings are absolutely freighted with meaning, far above and beyond the mere facts on the surface.

            So we see in today’s Gospel scene, a group of people brought to our Lord a deaf man who could not, of course, speak clearly.  In that body of concerned people, the early Christians saw themselves, that is, the Church, whose great mission is to intercede for the people of the world and to bring them to Christ.  Who else, they would knowingly ask themselves – who else could open the ears of someone’s heart and mind to really hear the truth?  How else can someone hear the truth unless they listen to Truth Himself?  Strange, though, what Jesus immediately does with the man brought to Him by these men:  “He took him off by himself away from the crowd.”

            Off by himself away from the crowd.  But not, the early Christians would have seen so much more clearly than we are apt to see – but not away from the Church.  How so?  Because of our Lord’s subsequent actions – “[Jesus] 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!’  And immediately the man’s ears were opened….”  Here is the Gospel foreshadowing of what the early Christians were already enjoying:  that deep, personal, and intimate encounter with Christ, with the saving grace of God, communicated to them through the holy Sacraments in the very heart of the Church.  From the earliest times of the Church, even up  until the very present, this Gospel scene is re-presented in every baptism, when the priest does the rite of Ephphatha by touching with his thumb the ears and mouth of the child being baptized, saying:  “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak.  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.” 

            Yes, off by himself away from the crowd… with Christ.  Off by himself away from the crowd into the very heart of the Church, there in that place of the Sacraments, which are true and wonderful encounters with the only one who can heal us.  Into the silence of the presence of God who comes to us like that still, small voice that Elijah heard and then covered his face with his mantle lest he be overwhelmed with the glory of that Presence; into the quietness where the believer, undistracted and receptive as the deaf man in today’s Gospel, can hear the real meaning of the oft-repeated words, “The Body of Christ,” or that soul-relieving, gentle formula of “I absolve you from your sins…,” or at the moment of that healing touch, “Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy, help you…,” or on that most joyful occasion of human self-giving when man and woman say to one another, echoing Christ’s own promise that He would never leave us, “I, Joe, take you, Jane, to be my wife.  I promise to be true to you….”  The Sacraments.  Christ still with us, opening our minds to hear His word, communicating His very self and life to us, forgiving us our sins, healing our broken bodies and spirits, blessing and strengthening (yes, and even making holy) our human loves so that they may be avenues of divine charity.  

            “He took him off by himself away from the crowd.”  Ah yes, here’s the key:  to escape the deafening noise of a world of distractions.  Here’s something of what I mean.  Something happened to me once that outwardly was not seemingly so significant, but like today’s Gospel, under the surface, was fraught with tremendous meaning.  I had the privilege to assist at a papal Mass on Palm or Passion Sunday in St. Peter’s Square in Rome.  It came to the long reading of the Gospel story of Christ’s suffering, to those so tragic words, “and then he gave up his spirit.”  And thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people all knelt down together on the hard stones of that old and famous piazza… and there was the most awesome silence, such quietness that one could begin to hear the sounds of a scourging whip and a man’s body being nailed to a cross.  In the presence of the 264^th Successor of Peter, bishops and members of the faithful from all over the world, in the silence of the Church’s memory of what really happened two thousand years ago, we all could hear, like we perhaps had never heard before, the word of the Gospel on that Palm Sunday.  “Ephphatha!  Be opened!”  And we heard, just like we can always hear our Lord if we would but listen to Him in the quietness of the heart of His Holy Church.