Friday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time: Mark 7:31-37
Whenever we approach any passage in Scripture, it is good to ask ourselves, “Where do I see myself here? How does it speak to me? How does it speak to us?” This is just as true for accounts of Jesus healing someone. In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus heals a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. If we are not physically deaf – or hearing-impaired in any way – it may be tempting to see this simply as a moment when Jesus is compassionate to someone else in need. But what is my need here? What is yours? How are you and I deaf? What impedes our speech? How do we need healing now?
One thing that makes us deaf – in a manner of speaking – is noise. We live in a world that is getting noisier. Studies have shown that constant noise is physically and psychologically unhealthy for us. Even in hospitals today, the noise level has reached unhealthy levels for patients. It isn’t just a physical challenge. We hear noise from various groups of people who vie for our support. We live in an increasingly fragmented and contentious society. Strife creates more noise. It becomes increasingly difficult to hear the truth, or to know and accept it when we do. We then try to fight noise with noise. We have the TV or music always in the background. Some people deliberately make their vehicles louder or play their music in their vehicles very loud. So the problem increases for everyone.
It isn’t just exterior noise, of course. We carry our own cacophony of noises within us. Our minds chatter on ceaselessly, while we are awake and often even in sleep. Our desires, fears, hopes, wounds, and sources of anger are some of the noisemakers within us. With all this noise, is it any wonder that we can become deaf – deaf to the needs of those who are closest to us (to say nothing of those we never see), deaf to the truth, even deaf to our own real needs and desires? Is it surprising that we become deaf to God? And, if we become deaf in this way, how can we know what we ought to say? If we cannot listen well, we will never understand one another. If we cannot understand one another, we will never know what to say. We won’t speak well.
Notice that the first thing that Jesus does with this deaf and speechless man is to remove him from the crowd. We can’t always literally remove ourselves from all people or all noise, but we all have a need to create a silent space in ourselves every day. We need to take a step back from all the noise – interior as well as exterior. There are ways that help us do that. One is repetitive prayer, like the rosary, the repetition of the Jesus Prayer, or meditative practices. Such prayers and practices help shut down the chattering mind. They turn our attention from all exterior noise, and calm us down and help us to listen. Some people stop there. But this isn’t enough. The repetition, the calming, isn’t for itself – as delicious as it may feel in a noisy, disturbed world. It’s meant to allow us to hear the Word – Jesus himself – speaking in our hearts. Silence and solitude are never for their own sakes. They are the place where we await the coming of the Bridegroom.
We might not hear Jesus speak in the way that we hear one another speak. But we create a space within us where we are waiting and open to Jesus. And he does speak within us, whether we hear words or not. He lavishly pours into our hearts the promised Spirit, that gives us life and wisdom. We find our true compass to help us find our way amidst all the noise. We find a way to discern what we can simply let be, what we need to promote, and what we need to resist. We also find out how we are to promote or resist. It’s not enough to say the right thing. We need to say it rightly, out of real Christian love. All of that becomes possible only if we can be healed of the effects of the noise we are immersed in and can wait for the Lord to speak to us. Then we can speak rightly, saying the truth in love. Otherwise, we may join in falsehood, or speak truth merely in a destructive or self-serving way.
Step back for a while, every day, from the noise around you and the noise within you. Create a space in our hearts of silence and solitude, a space that is for the Lord alone. Invite him there. He will come. In fact, he is already there, waiting for us to be still and know that he is God. Then will our deafness be healed. Then will we speak plainly, speaking the truth in love. Then, we become gifts of God to a noisy yet deaf world.