"Deafness" - A Reflection on the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year B

            At the first glance, the meaning of today’s Gospel reading was quite clear. A deaf man was brought to our Lord. Moved with compassion, Christ took the man to the side and healed him of his deafness, and his speech impediment was removed. The Lord thus fulfilled what the Prophet Isaiah foretold in the first reading,

“Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.”

            There is no doubt that being deaf entails many difficulties and challenges. I was privileged to come to know a few deaf people during my life studying American Sign Language at Gallaudet University. My heart was moved hearing many stories of how difficult for some of them growing up as a deaf person; the struggles to fit in with daily life as well as the constant looking-downs and offenses they had to endure from some of the hearing people around. So much so that, interestingly, the word for “sin” in ASL is signed as two index fingers, shaped like two hooks, come forward from a person’s mouth and then get twisted. It reflects the many abusive and condescending attitudes deaf people had to endure from those who were hearing.

            For these people in such difficulties, today’s Gospel offers hope. What Christ did for the deaf man reflects a beautiful message which the Messiah has come to proclaim: God is now among men; he has come and brought with him healings and consolations. Therefore, it was not too surprising that at the center of the seal of Gallaudet University, the first school for advance studies for the deaf and hard of hearing in the world, was the word of command Christ spoke in the Gospel today:  “Ephphatha” – “Be opened.”

            Now, although the majority of us are not physically deaf, however, we are prone to a different form of deafness, that of spiritual – We become those who have ears and yet cannot hear. This kind of spiritual deafness in many aspects is much more detrimental, for it renders us incapable of hearing not only the Word of life, the Voice of our Shepherd, but also the voice of those who are our neighbors. And very often, we are unaware of it.

            Brothers and sisters, it is because of our spiritual deafness that God’s continuous call for conversion is passed through unheeded. It is because of this deafness that the Gospel’s only rule of Charity is ignored.
            The outcome that it brings, at times, is utterly terrifying.

For instance, in the past, it rendered many incapable of hearing the cries of millions of innocent lives lost during the Nazis’ despicable attempt to eradicate the so-called Untermenschen – the inferior, undesirable, and dangerous.

In this present age, it continues to render many incapable of hearing the cries of the multitude of children going to bed hungry, of elderly men and women burdened with illnesses, of workers oppressed and exploited, and of people dying in corners of the streets throughout the world because of poverty, wars, political, and even religious rallies. These cries have echoed up to heaven; alas, many of us are unable to hear.

And if we think this form of spiritual deafness is just effecting the so-called “global problems” in some remote countries, we could not have been more mistaken. Observe carefully, it is effecting many families, even our own.

Here is how we detect it. We know that we have become spiritually deaf to our loved ones when no one seems to listen to each other anymore. Parents are too busy to know what’s going with their kids. Children are finding their elderly parents to be burdensome and are a pain-in-the-you-know-what. Spouses have become so self-absorbed that they pay no effort to know each other’s needs.

Yeah, forget the “big problems” of the world, the effects of being spiritually deaf is happening right in our very family if we pay no attention to it. It is in its own way much worse that being physically deaf for the reason that it is robbing us of things that truly matters. It is making us so poor. It is creating a new form of poverty – the greatest form of poverty, that of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for; that of “apologies withheld, of comfort suppressed, of affirmation denied, of embraces ungiven, and of love unspoken.”

It is of this deafness that we need to be healed.

How many of us are asking for that?