Initiation to Faith: He unclench the ears, but they remain deaf and stuttering

 

(Mk 7:31-37)

 

 

"But this Gospel also speaks to us: we are often withdrawn and closed in on ourselves, and we create many inaccessible and inhospitable islands. Even the most basic human relationships sometimes create realities incapable of mutual openness: the closed couple, the closed family, the closed group, the closed parish, the closed homeland... And this is not of God!"

[Pope Francis, Angelus 6 September 2015].

 

The background of the Gospel passage is the theme of initiation into the Faith, which invests the (inner) "senses" that risk being extinguished.

Every believer, in fact, also runs the danger of weakening perception, circumscribing vital energy, drastically reducing the relationship with profound reality, and the horizon of his journey.

"Effatà" was a globally expressive liturgical formula employed by the primitive churches in Baptism.

Behind that expression we find a truly living and conscious, albeit popular, ecclesial dimension.

Communities that perceive the language of Faith, welcome and share the thought of the Son; therefore they react to the stasis, they do not have fallen inclinations, nor do they remain mute and blind.

The invitation to open one's whole life wide [Effatà] stems from a missionary afflatus that does not let up. Let us see in what sense.

Jesus' far-fetched itinerary (v.31) suggests almost a reluctance on his part to turn back, staying rather among pagans. Why?

He realises that the "distant ones" seem to be less deaf to the Word of God than the people of Israel: they are awake, they receive, they have a still living conscience.

 

After the heated dispute about the pure and the impure, here is the Master getting impatient even with the disciples.

They have remained at the same level of spiritual deafness as the people, inert; mutilated of the spirit of Scripture.

Still deaf, they stammer: they have tied a knot in their tongues.

If they speak they do so with difficulty, in a disjointed, incomprehensible manner.

In short, the followers do not expound authentic messages.

They show themselves to be intimate, but despite appearances they still do not know how to listen [we would say: not even faithful to the living Tradition; cf. Dei Verbum 1]!

This is due to the fact that the ears of some of them are only open to cunning: they have to be "sturdied" without too many compliments.

In fact, Jesus' action is violent (v.33 Greek text).

The 'supporters' here seem to oppose in every way the action of Christ in its entirety.

 

The apostles believed that God's treasure was exclusively for the 'insiders' - not for the people.

He then strikes hard: he wants to meet the 'outsiders' so that they too can turn on their resources.

The Gospel episode is a parable of the condition of any person - even a rambunctious one - who upon meeting the Lord begins to perceive and communicate well, with wisdom.

No longer wavering in the trajectories of growth - with the fear of reality, and of oneself.

 

Religious wisdom or pagan philosophy have sought answers to the enigmas, to life's questions of meaning. And yet, so far, they have only tinkered.

Even the great civilisations have only thought up a few fragments of Truth. It has remained erratic and shaky. It has not expressed itself exactly, or fully.

E.g. (in Plato) Socrates speaks of the immortality of the soul, so he had a vague sense of indestructible Life, but did not receive the Light of Easter.

The problem here is not one of external catechism, but primarily personal and ecclesial.

The authentic Messiah cannot stand our dragging along, without confrontation and discussion that re-creates us.

 

The young Rabbi does not want the disciple to resign, to withdraw, to become attached to his own illness.

Even today, we still perhaps sclerotize on positions that do not question the real syndromes, and remain with the usual ailments - totally passive about them.

A scruffy and empty condition of life, from which the 'godfathers' of Baptism would like to emancipate us (v.32a).

They are the true co-workers of Christ, strangers to the circle of the ever-attached to God - those who heed him, but do not follow him.

His "angels" [cf. Mk 1:13] bring him a "deaf" (not mute, but) "stutterer".

This is the only time this term appears in the NT.

In the First Testament "stutterer" (moghilàlos) appears only once, to indicate the deliverance from the exodus of Babylon ["The tongue of the stutterer shall shout for joy", Is 35:6 LXX Greek verse].

Not physical healing, but an image of deliverance - radical - that becomes the motive and driving force of the person.

It is a problem of understanding!

 

Christ pulls us out, 'apart' (v.33)... even from the dissent of the 'intimates', who like to surround themselves with crowds and adhere to the common way of thinking; compromising and banal, not breaking the closures.

He wants to separate us from the way of reasoning around, of manner, of conformity; it wants to detach us from the qualunquist and other people's way of thinking.

He wants us to think and say sensible things, dictated by God's thinking and personal vocation; not trendy, à la page, normalised, standard.

Those who remain in the village where everyone chatters in the same way, or reasons in the same way, and chooses in the same way - stunned, dumbed down by impersonal voices - cannot be healed.

 

In fact, Jesus' 'sigh' (v.34) sounds like that of one who already feels taken hostage by his own, who seem to hold him like a lion in a cage. 

It takes a good outpouring of the Spirit from Heaven to stay calm and not slap them around... and commit to starting [again] all over again.

The very intimates continue to prefer the usual booklets of instruction and prohibition: easier - than taking risks and letting themselves be educated.

[Considering themselves privileged, some have taken possession of his Person by transmitting it in bits and pieces, through a teaching that neither astonishes nor liberates, nor announces it, but stutters and debases it].

 

"To 'sigh' is also to ask: is it worth it? The worst choice would be to become mistrustful.

 

After the Second Vatican Council, we have just begun to open our ears to the Word, and gradually the preaching is changing - but with the usual biblical timescales. (Today we hope for the synodal path).

In the meantime, an idea of a 'barefoot' Church is spreading here and there, one that knows how to listen to the questions of today's man, instead of shutting them up.

An institution in the province of grand narratives and scarcely incisive, but which perhaps begins to leave out a few catchphrases, and begins not to silence all questions.

At last we realise that it is time for proclamation and new catechesis, for convincing language and discernment - and a very different pastoral. Not for this glamour.

But before taking action on the ground, it is appropriate for curials, leaders, captains and consuls to open their eyes and ears - involving themselves in person.

 

"Open up!" remains the pressing invitation to open up new avenues again: to unblock the dialogue, to be concrete and respectful, to put life back into the picture. Enriching oneself and others.

The only great miracle is to open each person up to perception and communication, intuiting and giving everything of themselves.

Because by seeking the truth in deep and mutual listening, beyond fraternities or cordatas, one no longer stutters.

Even the high-profile hierarchy is beginning to break through the usual external, rubber and stone walls.

In the meantime, ecumenical and cross-cultural confrontation moves us out of the status quo that blocks the most significant achievements.

It is Dialogue that conveys meaning and substance even to Dogmatics.

Only in this way will we succeed in discernment, as well as in prolonging the creative Action of the Son.

In short, the hinge of it all is the knowledge that the Person of Christ communicates wonder and fullness of life; he does not transmit ties.

 

In Semitic culture, saliva [v.33: "and having spat, he touched his tongue"] was considered condensed breath.

An image of the Spirit that liberates from alienation - of course, not from the outside.

Evangelisation must also be configured in such a concomitance, in solidarity with the realisation, and engaged in the processes: from within.

Thus we will live fluently, and proclaim the Good News in favour of our Happiness. Finding unexpected solutions.

Unfortunately - despite the unleashing of the same Spirit in people, the "narrower" heralds continued to want to preach the "Son of Man" as "the" (that) Messiah they expected (v.36).

But religion prone to spectacle, and the ideology of power, all external exhibitionism - also showy - never had anything to do with Him.

 

In Baptism, the Lord unplugs our ears to enable us to listen to the 'Word' that becomes an 'event', and loosens our tongues so that we can make what is proclaimed resound to others.

Through this unsealing we have been made believers and prophets. Before, we were babblers.

After hearing, we began to speak correctly, not by our own virtue: only because we received from others the Word that gives life, heals, and does not lie.

However, we often plug our ears and tie our tongues, shrinking soul, spirit, and hands.

But in this way we make God less present and active; we prevent growth, block openness; any development of full life.

 

The attitude of the son? To open the Exodus to the world, to true knowledge, to the light of the Gospel; where there is no darkness.

And the mission of the authentic Church is not to decide everything, but to make people hear and speak. Without the a-priori of useless references.

 

To open up remains our decisive Vocation.

 

 

Religion in entrance, Faith in exit

 

Jesus' seemingly rambling itinerary into pagan territory met with opposition from the disciples (the watermark of the deaf and stammering), whose ears he had to unclog and heal the AnnouncementFrancis immediately began to heal the listening defect of Western Catholicism by opening his eyes and ears already from the balcony of election. As soon as he appeared he dared to speak of 'evangelisation' without hesitation. On that day of general enthusiasm, perhaps only the insiders realised how much in that detail the pontiff wanted to make our swamped and opinionated reality grow, sitting on the benches of a sacramentalisation tinged with blatant self-satisfaction.

Previously, not even John Paul II had been able to afford the luxury of not restricting the term with adjectives, because it sounded 'Protestant' to traditionalists. The Polish pope had been forced by many rearguard prelates to launch a more moderate slogan: the 'new' evangelisation. But Francis understood that the Gospel is not old-fashioned or old-fashioned proclamation; in whatever language one puts it, it is a simple and clear proposal of life, beyond the fact that in the times it may enjoy some updated mode or vehicle of transmission.

In the Anglo-Saxon world, the term (evangelisation) describes personal approaches and situations of various kinds, far more direct and dynamic than our 'lay apostolate', derived from pastoral action inspired by the climate of the Council; then timidly debased by a whole backwater of chains of command (and mediocrities who row against).

In fact, on the ground and above all in provincial Italy, the action of the distant and families has been harnessed in the usual wind-guard containers, which scripturally cloak the clericisation of return. So much so that the committed laity themselves are often destined not to bring their personal gifts into play - too close to reality - but only to replenish the thinned ranks of the consecrated, preferably with a prone and doctrinal mentality.

In our Catholic way of conceiving, once upon a time (not remotely) only the term 'missionary' was willingly in use; however, reduced to the education and human promotion that the 'talare' world - as primate - granted or went on to impose in the various areas (cultures banally understood as object-of-doctrine).

But the formation of missionaries has long since been modified in the accentuation of passive virtues.

In former times, for example, what counted was: in mission lands there had to be first and foremost leaders - capable of leadership, of living alone; draggers and organisers of events... In essence, outside the nomenclature, the witness of Christ was imagined as a strong and resourceful man.

After Vatican II, it was realised that the best characteristic of the missionary is not his active quality and his capacity for proselytism (which in the very passage of the Gospel Jesus tries to contain) but that he knows how to fit into contexts, respect culture and particular situations, be very welcoming, be content, be capable of listening, understanding, reflection, and so on.

But now it is a matter of making a qualitative leap that the most backward sectors of the Church still struggle to make: that of no longer considering themselves protagonists and Subjects that dominate Dialogue.

Our relationship with our neighbour, even in situations of prime necessity, is authentic if we not only overcome the selfishness of keeping things to ourselves, but when we annihilate the self-satisfaction of feeling ourselves to be leading figures, (interlocutors of the needy, but) institutional and prominent figures.

Indigents and seekers of the Truth, on the other hand, must be placed on an equal footing, they too being Subjects and not objects of awareness or generously bestowed alms. For a pastoral action that makes those who propose it to others grow first!

 

The second disease Francis wished to cure was that of the stuttering of a people accustomed to the practice of devotions and not to listening to the Word, from which Faith derives.

He found himself before people well disposed to observances, to respect for liturgical times and intimism - of a Jesus kept close to their hearts, placed on the bedside table... and sometimes good for falling asleep.

But he saw a people substantially indifferent to correspond in life to the meaning of the rites themselves and to embody the Gospels' call. 

Having practised religion, the existence and choices of the 'believers' ran on totally autonomous tracks, quite different from the authentic meaning of the numerous (as much as in itself unfulfilled) prayerful interludes.

Beyond laziness and self-interest, the capacity for Listening for conversion is still lacking; and those who do not lend an ear - the beginning of any relationship - then cannot communicate anything worthwhile; they only tarry.

Hence an undergrowth culture, often muddled in its commitment, capable of excelling almost only in the field of jokes; folded in on itself, aged in the defence of its own acquired economic levels but lacking in Hope, even in the young people of the parish: "But open up!"Francis has tried to bring the fresh Spirit to the people who cannot afford to live off their income, and he still believes in the power that the proclamation of the Good News releases; but for this we must first let our ears be opened wide!

In his first apostolic exhortation (Evangelii Gaudium), the Pope dedicated a substantial space to the Proclamation and even to Preaching - even within a framework concerning the entire People of God; far more than the now congested apostolate of the laity.

In short, there is a life to be proclaimed that is not bogged down, and for this the Magisterium seeks to overcome the fetters of the role reserved to the 'sermon', which today no longer takes the cork out of the ears of old Europe.

Last but not least, the missionary transformation of the 'outgoing Church', which is realised in the style of a bishop of Rome who no longer suggests - as so many predecessors did - moralistic or pious advice to merit Paradise and rise to Heaven, but that God brings it to you, sometimes shoves it in your face.

All this, not to detach oneself from the human family in order to spiritualise the self without too much hassle.

The Lord manifests himself in the opposite direction: he humanises and asks for this downward push; a quality of relationship and not sterilisation.

He knows he is addressing a difficult world, rooted in the formal mediocrity of mannerist catwalks, which not infrequently content themselves with giving to believe and showing off...

A world sick of externality which, however, does not shy away from wanting to cure its stuttering, first by unclogging its ears.

And by encouraging us to take care of our yearning to see better and to be able to express ourselves not haphazardly, making us proceed "far from the crowd" (v.33) conformist, which makes us pale, confusing, levelling, flattening.

 

At the end of the passage from Mk, then bursts forth the chorus of praise of the assembly of those baptised in the Spirit.

People re-created by the action of Jesus; enabled and able to listen and proclaim.

People who have made Exodus, moving from a religiosity good for all seasons to a personal journey of Faith, which proclaims, transmits, and does not shoplift for itself.

Authentic women and real men, who have learnt to recognise and welcome the action of the God who is revealing Himself, who unceasingly comes. Not like the one who may have come... or will come.

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

Do we recognise ourselves in the Mission of the Church or are we deaf, inert and mute through indolence (or interest)?