Today's Gospel

Radical Openness

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark 7:31-37. Then Jesus returned from the region of Tyra and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through the region of the Decopolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. And they besought him to lay hands upon him. 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, "Apatha, that is, be open." And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And he charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, "He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak."

What jumps out at you today? We read these readings, but often, I think we don't really think about it. Like, think about putting your fingers in someone's ears and touching your fingers on someone's tongue. And not someone you know, but someone who's just come down the street and probably hygiene wasn't the best and all that sort of thing. That's the grid of the gospel that we often read straight through or sanitize in our minds or whatever. But that's what was going on here. And then I think it's impossible not to have jump out at you, that phrase, be open. And what is it that you need to be open to? Yes. Do we all need to be healed in different ways? Yes, do we need to be healed of our blindness and healed of our deafness? And to be open in that way. But let's pray for that today. Let's ask God to heal us, to open us in the ways we need to, so that we can hear the people close to us in new ways, really listen to them with the depths like never before, so that we can see things with new eyes like never before. Be open. Have an amazing day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.