Deaf and dumb?

Today's Gospel is not about a parable, which Jesus quite often used to convey an important teaching valid for all times, but about a real happening which took place thanks to his loving mercy for the needy and the suffering. This real 'event', however, can be called "a living parable", because through it Our Lord wanted to teach us something important for our lives.

Some commentators have also read between the lines in this narrative a foretaste of the Sacraments, which he was to leave as a heredity to the Christians of all times. In these too we have the use of words and actions similar to those described in today's narrative.

A poor man, who was deaf and dumb, was brought to him "with the prayer that he would lay his hand upon him". Without saying anything and in response to their faith, Jesus cures the man and asks those around him, quite unsuccessfully as the report tells us, not to publicise what had taken place.

The first thing that we learn from this miracle is about Our Lord's infinite love and compassion for the suffering. He too had a human heart and took pity of the poor man who, while being quite healthy in every other respect, was unable to socialise with others externalising his thoughts and feelings, and was also prevented from admiring and enjoying the beauty of God's creation around him. Jesus cures him and makes a new man out of him, enabling him to lead a normal life within his family and in society.

But what Jesus had above all in mind when performing this miracle was each one of us. Our eyesight may be perfect. We are able to talk, and perhaps even have the gift of the gab, as they say, to share our thoughts and feelings with others. But how often does it happen that, while we have good eyes and ears, we are spiritually blind and deaf when it comes to discovering God's presence in all that happens to us and around us?

God alone knows how much we are often missing by exhausting our energy, with material realities, just as if the values and needs of the spirit were non existent.

The rampant materialism of today, concerned almost entirely with matter just as if the spirit did not exist, is the greatest danger for us, which we Christians are called and expected to resist. Material concerns are the ones that very often divert our attention from the lasting values of the spirit. But God has in fact provided us with the necessary means to avert this danger.

There is first of all the word of God, which reaches us through the Holy Scripture and the Church's ministry. When we read it, we often make hardly any effort to understand it and get the saving message coming to us from God. We 'hear', but we do not 'listen'. And one listens with one's heart, when it is disposed to grasp God's message, to accept it and turn it into practice.

At Mass we all hear the word of God with our ears, but we find it hard to grasp and still more to apply to ourselves. When such a thing happens, we are of course the losers. Jesus is passing near us, looking at us and talking to us, and then we fail to get his message because of our conceit and immersion in worldly matters.

But we are often also spiritually dumb, unable to irradiate the christian message to others. Is it because we are too proud and conceited, or too taken up by worldly interests which leave us indifferent to the needs of others?