Ephphatha! Be Opened!

In today’s Gospel, we hear the story of Jesus curing a deaf man. The people who were fascinated with Jesus, the words he spoke, and the miracles he accomplished brought Him a deaf man who could not speak.  They asked Jesus to heal him. Jesus did as they asked.

The followers were very much like us, looking for something they could see and touch. They did not ask him to free the deaf man from sin or any anger or unwillingness to forgive he held in his heart. They wanted something they could measure, observe, and know without doubt that it had been accomplished.

So, like us, they were! We often ask for things we can easily see and measure when we pray. We ask for jobs, a hurricane season free from storms, and good medical test results. We ask for what we can see and experience in “real” life. Regretfully, we often determine whether God is listening to us by the outcome of our job search, the weather, and our health.

I think God gets that and wants us to ask for our material needs, but certainly not to the exclusion of our spiritual needs.  

I often consider an analogy when praying about the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It also fits here. When speaking about Confession, I always think that we miss the deepest graces of the sacrament because we are too busy with the fruits of sin rather than the core sin.  

Think about it like this.  If we go to Confession and only repeat the surface stuff time and again, it is like picking raspberries.  We are only confessing the fruits, not the deeper sin.  Suppose we want – we need- the deepest graces of the sacrament. In that case, we must dig much more deeply and ask God to forgive surface actions and far deeper attitudes and beliefs about ourselves and others.  Complete healing is possible when those core sins are pulled out by the roots.  When we ask for and receive root forgiveness, we will not go back to simply picking the raspberries of sin in Confession again.

The prayers we bring to God are much the same.  There is nothing wrong with praying for the surface needs in our lives.  That is picking raspberries.  In this case, we are picking the raspberries for our everyday needs.  

We cannot allow ourselves to stop there.  We must push past our surface needs to pray for what we know as the Gifts of the Spirit. We must pray for wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord to be made manifest in our everyday lives.

We ask God to heal us at the depth of our being. We implore God to answer our prayer. We fervently pray He heals us and His gifts reign in our hearts. That is the core, the root of the raspberry bush of prayer. God needs to heal, nurture, and care for it. God can only nurture the Gifts of the Spirit in us if we are open and want His intervention and healing. We must ask like the deaf man, in today’s Gospel, for healing.

In the Gospel today, when Jesus heals the deaf man.  He says Ephphatha! which means Be opened.  When we hear Ephphatha echo through the centuries, Jesus is speaking to us.  Jesus is saying to each of us personally, “Come to me and bring the core of your needs; bring the most profound areas where you struggle and are led into sin; bring your deepest desires.”   And, He will say to us, “Ephphatha! Be opened.  Open your heart, soul, and the deepest parts of yourself where you are broken, and I will heal, forgive, and answer your prayer.”

We must always strive to be brave enough to dig down below the surface and give God our heart and soul. Then, we will know more fully the wonder of God working within us and healing us.

In God’s Unending Love,

Gwen