23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

          There are a lot of beautiful little details in this relatively short passage from Mark’s Gospel.  It goes by so quickly, we might not notice everything.  And so, I’d like to pick out just a couple of details that I think are particularly meaningful and then see if I can apply in some way this great story of “opening” and of healing to our own situation, as individuals and as a Church.

          First, notice where Jesus is.  It says he went “into the district of the Decapolis.”  This word “Decapolis” literally means “ten cities,” and was area on the far side of the Sea of Galilee.  More importantly, it was Gentile territory, that is, non-Jewish territory.  What does this tell us?  To use a phrase that has becoming very popular in these past few years: Jesus is “going to the margins” – literally to the margins of Jewish society.  He’s going to those not of the house of Israel primarily, but to “pagans” and “non-believers.”  To borrow some of the language of Saint James in our second reading, He shows “no partiality” in whom He chooses to minister.  

          Next, notice just how Jesus goes about this healing.  The text says, “He took him off by himself away from the crowd.”  Okay.  So what does this tell us?  It tells us that Jesus isn’t trying to draw attention to Himself.  He’s not doing this to win over the crowd.  He’s not “putting on a show” for them.  Rather, He cares about the person, the individual; He cares about this man.  This is truly “patient centered care.”

          And then, Jesus does something very peculiar, and frankly a little weird and gross.  It says, “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!”  In almost all of Jesus’ miracles there is this personal touch, only on a few occasions does He heal someone from a distance.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus even makes a kind of “salve” with His own spit and dirt and then smears it on the eyes of a blind man in order to restore His sight.  But the healing we hear about today seems to even top that in terms of just how physical, how earthy Jesus gets. 

About a week ago I went to go anoint someone in the hospital.  I can’t imagine how they would have reacted if I had said, “Okay, now I’m going to stick my fingers in your ears, spit, then touch your tongue and groan.”  But I love this!  It’s so beautifully “incarnational.”  It reminds us that our God became a man of flesh and blood and spit.  And that it is through this “crude matter” that He chooses to heal us; that He chooses to redeem us even.

          One of my absolute favorite things about being Catholic is that we really throw our bodies and our senses into our worship.  We sit, stand, and kneel.  We splash ourselves with water.  We burn incense and light candles.  We lay on hands and anoint with oil.  We display crucifixes and sacred art.  We sing songs and toll bells.  We gather and eat “bread” that has become Christ’s flesh, and drink “wine” that has become His blood.  We don’t put ourselves in “sensory deprivation chambers” and try to empty our minds.  Ours is a very earthy religion, at once natural and supernatural.  It is the meeting of heaven and earth.  If we didn’t learn all of this – this sense of ritual and sacrament – just from our very bodily existence, we certainly learned it from Jesus, the Incarnate Word, the Word made flesh.

          And notice that the remedy that Jesus provides in this healing is so appropriate, so targeted to the illness.  The man is deaf, and so Jesus puts His fingers into his ears.  The man has a speech impediment, and so Jesus takes some of his own spit and touches his tongue.  What is not whole in this man is restored by the wholeness of Christ.

          Notice that Jesus groans.  How strange?  What does this mean?  I think it means that this is work – this is labor.  I think it also means this is the work too of the Holy Spirit.  Here I am reminded of the passage from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans in which he writes: “The Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.” 

And then notice Jesus’ prayer: “Be opened!” So simple, but so profound.  It indicates something much more, I think, than just that this man’s ears or mouth be opened, but that his heart be opened to receive the grace of God.  Another “run of the mill” healing by Jesus this is not, once you delve a little deeper into the details.

This is all fine and good.  But now, what does this have to do with us today?  In reflecting on this passage, of course, I first personally identified with this man who is healed.  I had to consider my own “deafness” – perhaps to the needs of others, perhaps to message of the Gospel itself, not really allowing it enter into my heart and even at times willfully plugging my own ears to it for the sake of convenience or comfort.  I had to consider my own “speech impediment” – how I have at times failed to speak clearly, or charitably, or to speak boldly when justice demanded it.  I would offer that this might be a good personal reflection for all of us to do.

At another level, though, I thought of this man who is deaf and with a speech impediment as kind of image of the Church, and specifically the Church in this particular moment in time, reeling as we still are from these self-inflicted wounds of sexual abuse.  As a Church we are reminded that we have been “deaf” in many cases to the victims of abuse.  And in some case we have been “mute” or at least we have not spoken out clearly or forcefully in their defense.  There is certainly a need right now for healing in our Church and I would say even a need for opening – to have our ears opened, our mouths opened, our hearts opened.  And perhaps even to have our records opened in greater transparency and our minds opened to new solutions.

Now, I’m not advocating a total upheaval or “reinventing” of the Church, but I am saying that just as in past ages of the Church, we may have to consider new ways of doing things that don’t rob us of our fundamental identity, but in fact make us more who we are and are meant to be as a Church, as the living Body of Christ.

In the wake of the renewed revelation of these past scandals, we are seeing something very interesting happening, and something really very sad.  So called “conservatives” are trying to blame the “post Vatican II liberals,” claiming that their lackadaisical approach to personal morality, even as they called for greater social justice, is at the root of all of this.  At the same time, those who would call themselves “progressive” are trying to pin this on the “pre-Vatican II conservatives,” claiming that their own pent-up sexuality, their clericalism and insistence on defending the institutions of the Church at all costs is at the root of all this.  But there is a piece of data from the CARA Report (that is, the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate) that, to my mind, tells a very interesting story.  In charting the cases of reported abuse over the past several decades it showed an almost perfect bell curve, with the height of that curve (meaning when the reported cases of abuse were at their highest) being in 1964.  In other words, almost half before Vatican II and half after. 

It’s also worth pointing out how dramatically such cases have dropped in the past two or three decades – to listen to the news somedays you could easily get the impression that nothing at all has changed and that the Church is exactly in the same place in was in terms of reporting and prevention as it was in 1964. 

My point is, these sins, these scandals cut across all lines.  And I think that this ultimately because this was less about sex and more about power and the abuse of relationships of power by so-called “progressives” and so-called “conservatives” alike.  This isn’t about “progressive” or “conservative” and if just one side or the other would only “win out” (depending on your view point), then everything would be okay.  The wound goes much deeper than these, frankly, very worldly political categories.  And the cure will have to go deeper too.  We are all in this together.  

I don’t what this “opening” will look like.  I don’t know what the “cure” will be.  But I am convinced that if it is of the Holy Spirit – if it is of God, it will cut across lines; it will disquiet all in the Church “progressive” and “conservative” alike.  And all of us will likely find ourselves both consoled and challenged.

It is clear that our Church, like the man in the Gospel, is in need of healing.  And that healing, like the healing in the Gospel, will mean going to the margins.  It will need to be person-centered, not just an “institutional display.”  It will be deeply incarnational, “earthy,” sacramental.  It will be specific and appropriate to the nature of these wounds.  There will be groaning – Jesus groaning to heal us, the Spirit groaning.  And this healing will “take hold” to the degree that we, all of us, of whatever political or ecclesial leaning, will be open to it.  But we should be hopeful.  After all, we have a diagnosis, we know better the extent of the illness, and most of all we have the best “doctor” in the universe.