Fr Marco Lazzaron
oday’s readings fill us with joy, starting with the prophet Isaiah, who addresses a people resigned from years of exile and who have lost all their hope in God. Isaiah says: “Courage, do not fear! Behold your God… he comes to save you”. The same thing is taken up by the psalmist who tells us that “the Lord remains faithful forever” and does great things for us. Both Isaiah and the psalm also tell us that God will remove those impediments that often hinder us from following his will: “the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be opened”.
There are tragic cases of children condemned to solitude because they were blind, deaf, and mute from birth. The commitment and skill of language specialists sometimes manage to open up the world of signs and words to them.
But what about when the heart’s eyes, ears and tongue are blocked? How many people, how many couples who don’t understand each other, who no longer speak to each other, how many individuals, groups, institutions, or nations, especially when mutual trust is lost and one is no longer capable of accepting others with their fragility, even with what is most precious within them. Thinking about all these situations, we can more easily grasp the symbolic value of the healing of the deaf-mute to whom Jesus orders: “Open up!” The gestures he performs take us back to the rite of baptism: reopening the hearing and untying the knots of the tongue are indeed a miracle, but they are also the signs of the baptismal gift that transforms man into a child of God, who learns through listening. to profess the announcement of salvation brought by Jesus.
The theme of listening is recurring throughout the Bible; in Deuteronomy 6, Moses says: “Listen, Israel!” Being deaf, in the Bible, means not welcoming and not listening to God’s message of salvation. We too, overwhelmed by the thousand things to do, surrounded by noise, chatter, conflicting opinions, we struggle to listen to the profound desire for meaning that we carry in our hearts and we have difficulty entering into dialogue with God.
With the word “open up”, Jesus invites us to start a dialogue with Him, and enables us to live as Christians: it is an invitation to make room in our hearts for his word. The deaf man does not go to Jesus of his own free will, but the Gospel specifies: “They brought him to Jesus”: this fact means that this man, resigned to his sick condition, needed someone to accompany him to Jesus. It is an invitation to be attentive to those in need! Those who have truly had the experience of listening to God also know how to listen to their brother and become his companion on the journey, to lead him to God.
How many times in the family, at work, in the various activities we carry out, and in our own communities, we have problems of deafness and mutism as we are caught up in our thoughts and preconceived ideas! We hear, but we don’t listen. Let us then also ask Jesus to open our ears and give us back the gift of the word, to be his witnesses.