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JESUS CURES A DEAF MAN – MARK 7:31-37Yesterday’s Gospel reading in the Novus Ordo liturgy for Holy Mass was the story of Jesus healing a deaf man in the Decapolis, a region of ten towns on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in the southeastern Levant in the first centuries BC and AD. Only St. Mark gives this account. Before the healing, Jesus was in Tyre and travelled past Sidon. The Decapolis, a Gentile area, was about 120 miles away. Now imagine this: Jesus who had been sent to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:21-28) went out of his way to go to a place colonized by pagan Romans and Greeks to heal one of their members. And the manner of the healing is noteworthy:“And taking him aside from the multitude privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, ‘Eph′phatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’” (verses 33-34).The first thing Jesus does is pierce the deaf man’s ears so that he may hear. The second thing Jesus does is spit and touch the deaf man’s tongue so that he can speak. Notice that hearing comes BEFORE speaking. The third thing Jesus does is look to heaven and say to the man, “Be opened.”Our deaf ears must be pierced to clear away the debris of obstruction preventing us from hearing the Truth that is Christ. Our tongue mute to speaking the Truth that is Christ must be touched by His spittle so that when we do speak, it is what He would have us to say. The command, “Be opened,” is said to us so that no longer will we be closed to the Truth that is Christ.