Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

"Ephphatha!"-- "Be Opened"

In today's gospel, Jesus opens the ears and restores the speech of one who is deaf. It is common for those who are not able to hear to also have a speech impediment. This relationship between speaking and hearing is no coincidence; speech is perfected not through the tongue, but through the ear.  Speaking is all about self-expression.  We use it both for healing and wounding,   praising and condemning.  It is a powerful tool in the hands of one who is adept in the art of speaking. Listening is associated with receptivity,  vulnerability, and openness.  It can manifest as profound hospitality and docility to a teacher, but it can also be a profound failure to act in the face of injustice.  In the right combination of motive and skill, it is God's gift of deep abiding wisdom and healing.  Speaking and listening is our agent of true communion.

We shouldn't confuse listening with hearing, though.  Hearing is simply the physical act of perception, but not of response; listening is much deeper.  Listening presupposes attention.  When we listen, we are in communion with the speaker, opening ourselves to her or his word, allowing ourselves to have our consciousness shaped by the word spoken.  When we attend to the proclamation of Scripture, we are open both to the word (text) and Word (God's voice heard in Jesus and the Spirit).  It isn't the book that saves; it’s the words and Word attended to that becomes healing and life.

Today, the Letter of James tells us to listen to this:

"Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters.
Did not God choose those who are poor in the world
to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom
that he promised to those who love him?"

We hear the poor, but do we really listen?  What would it mean to “be opened” to poverty?  Does it mean we must become poor ourselves? (That's the scary part!).  What if we did become poor?  We could then not help the poor because we would be poor, as the reasoning goes.  But what constitutes "helping the poor"?  The poverty of the poor is much more than the absence of financial means; it is a loss of participation in making choices.  To hear the poor is to participate in their poverty at this level.  To give the poor hearing and a voice, one must first enter into communion and listen.  Too often those who seek to "help" begin by imposing a solution rather than by entering into communion through listening.  The "poor" is not a single entity, but something in us all.  Can we hear our poverty?  Can we experience the beggar in ourselves, and are we ready to enter into communion with the literal beggar and listen before we speak?