"Ephphatha" - "Be opened

Ephphatha - Be opened

I am providing the readings of today Feb 12, 2021 below. The first reading is important because it opens us up to the reflection and then the question: We are going to be opening ourselves up to someone, so just who are you listening to today? The reflection follows the readings.

Reading I Gn 3:1-8

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made.

The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”
The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”

But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.” The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it;

and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

When they heard the sound of the LORD God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

Gospel

Mk 7:31-37

Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. 

He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He 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, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. 
He ordered them not to tell anyone.  But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well. 
He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

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Pope Benedict XVI reflection

“There is not only a physical deafness which largely cuts people off from social life; there is also a "hardness of hearing" where God is concerned, and this is something from which we particularly suffer in our own time. Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God - there are too many different frequencies filling our ears. What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited to our age. Along with this hardness of hearing or outright deafness where God is concerned, we naturally lose our ability to speak with him and to him. And so we end up losing a decisive capacity for perception. We risk losing our inner senses. This weakening of our capacity for perception drastically and dangerously curtails the range of our relationship with reality in general. The horizon of our life is disturbingly foreshortened...

“The Gospel tells us that Jesus put his fingers in the ears of the deaf-mute, touched the sick man's tongue with spittle and said "Ephphatha" - "Be opened". The Evangelist has preserved for us the original Aramaic word which Jesus spoke, and thus he brings us back to that very moment. What happened then was unique, but it does not belong to a distant past: Jesus continues to do the same thing anew, even today. At our Baptism he touched each of us and said "Ephphatha" - "Be opened" -, thus enabling us to hear God's voice and to be able to talk to him...

“The Gospel invites us to realize that we have a "deficit" in our capacity for perception - initially, we do not notice this deficiency as such, since everything else seems so urgent and logical; since everything seems to proceed normally, even when we no longer have eyes and ears for God and we live without him. But is it true that everything goes on as usual when God no longer is a part of our lives and our world?

“As we gather here, let us here ask the Lord with all our hearts to speak anew his "Ephphatha", to heal our hardness of hearing for God's presence, activity and word, and to give us sight and hearing. Let us ask his help in rediscovering prayer, to which he invites us in the liturgy and whose essential formula he has taught us in the Our Father.” - HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI 

“Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened”

“Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened”

The Suscipe (Latin for "take"), a radical prayer from St Ignatius, is not found in any of the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises, but rather was included by Ignatius as additional material in regards to the “contemplation for attaining love” at the end of the Exercises. In this section, Ignatius speaks of the immeasurable love of God that is bestowed upon all of creation, and then asks what he might offer to such a loving God:

'Take Lord and receive all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or hold, You have given me; I give it all back to You and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.' (Spiritual Exercises, #234)

Be Opened - a meditation from Adrienne von Speyr

And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened” Jesus looks up to the Father. It is as if he always wants to work a mira­cle in the Trinity, never alone. The Father and the Spirit are in heaven. And he, even as a man in the world, al­ways has access to heaven.

Even more: he draws heaven nearer in order not to act alone, to be confirmed, to allow for participation in what he will do. This divine, mutual sharing with an­other is what, throughout his whole life, the Lord gives to us. For a whole context is there: the deaf-mute who lets himself passively be led there, those who are active and bring him, and lastly those watching, who will write it down. The Lord is there, who is God and man; and heaven is there. A whole, immense sharing, then, in which each performs what is his to perform, without our being able to know exactly what belongs to whom.

That is Christian, already a kind of Eucharistic mira­cle. The Lord gives his body because he is on earth; he gives his bodily touch. He does not give only his divine power to work miracles. And he does not refuse peo­ple’s help. But with his gaze toward heaven, he seeks the nearness of the Father and the Spirit and the whole of heaven. Only then, after this wordless prayer—for every glance up to heaven is a prayer for the Son—he sighs. He sighs because he is tired, because power is going out of him again. He sighs in obedience. And then he speaks the word Ephphatha. The man’s ears and mouth are to open. They are to open primarily in a supernatural sense, which secondarily draws the earthly sense after it. They are to open so that they can receive faith, but also so that they can perceive and speak the audible words of faith.

ADRIENNE VON SPEYR

 –  (†1967) was a Swiss physician, a mystical writer, and a stigmatist.

For von Speyr, the Son’s perfect embodiment of the Suscipe reveals to the world the love of the Father and the Trinitarian relationships of complete openness and reciprocal love. Using the Suscipe rather than philosophical categories, she describes the unity and distinctions of the Persons of the Trinity with analogies of love and sacramental marriage that maintain a unity that cannot be severed by time and distance.

Reflection:

Self-identity is a big deal in our society. Knowing who we are enables us to journey forward through life with confidence, a sense of direction and purpose, an accurate assessment of our capabilities as well as weaknesses. Inevitably though, confidence wanes. Our struggle with confidence is due by the fact that we hold onto a myth - a myth that says we are autonomous and individual. In the gos­pel, the question Jesus addresses to his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” was not about his seeking his own self-awareness. It was a question put to the disciples that would reveal to them more deeply who he was to them in relation to one another and themselves. Jesus opens up for them that 1) their ‘self’ is structured in and through relationships with others, 2) this relationship is always unstable and wavering when the Transcendent Other is not present and 3) 'confidence' is obtained only through Him as member of the Trinity. One obtains a constituted ‘self’ substantiated with authority and confidence when one is open to receiving as a gift their liberty, memory, understanding and will from the Lord. You can see how truly radical the Suscipe prayer is from St Ignatius.

'Take Lord and receive all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or hold, You have given me; I give it all back to You and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.' (Spiritual Exercises, #234)