23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) - 8 September
8th September 2024
“This little word, ‘Ephphatha – Be opened,’ sums up Christ’s entire mission. He became man so that man, made inwardly deaf and dumb by sin, would become able to hear the voice of God, the voice of love speaking to his heart, and learn to speak in the language of love, to communicate with God and with others.” - Pope Benedict XVI, 9 Sept 2012
A reflection on today's Gospel by the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen:
"When God with His divine nature came down to this world and took upon Himself the human nature from the womb of His Blessed Mother, He took upon Himself an instrument. Once God took upon Himself our human nature, He could act in our name. And every one of the actions of that human nature would have an infinite value. Not a sigh, a word, a tear, a step of that human nature was inseparable from the Person of God. That is why one breath of God-made-man would have been enough to have redeemed the world. Why? Because it was the breath of God, and therefore had an infinite value. Why then did God suffer so much when He took upon Himself our human nature? God’s love knows no limits. The only way to prove perfect love is by surrender of all that one has in oneself. God took upon Himself our human nature, and He said that He loved us unto the end, even to death.
"He took upon Himself our sicknesses and our illnesses. What does sacred scripture mean by that? For about two years I pondered that passage. The answer came in reading the work of a famous Swiss psychiatrist. He tells the story of two doctors, both of whom had healing hands. One of the doctors stated that whenever he healed anyone, something of the sickness of that other person passed to himself. The other doctor stated that he often cured patients of angina, but he had to give up healing because he suffered so many attacks of angina. Is not this the key? Now let us go into some of the cures of our Lord. We often read in the gospels that when He cured the deaf, the dumb, and the blind, He sighed. We read that when He raised Lazarus from the dead, He groaned. I believe that at that moment our Lord took upon Himself the ills and the sicknesses of others. When He cured a blind man, I think that He felt inside Himself not just the blindness of that one man, but all the blindness of men that have ever lived."
(Through the Year with Fulton Sheen)
Prayer to Open Eyes and Ears
Lord Jesus, I ask You to open my eyes as You did with the blind man, so that I may really see. Tune my ears as You did with the man who was deaf and dumb, so that I may really hear what You are saying to me. May the many experiences of my senses
remind me of all God's blessings that surround me. May all that I experience
lead me closer to You. Amen. 🙏💐💖