So, in the Gospel for today, Jesus took the deaf man who had a speech impediment aside, “in private, away from the crowd, put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.” A short, simple point to reflect on. If you are like me, you sometimes take your senses for granted: yes, the very simple the fact that we can see, hear, smell, touch and speak. As we grow older, we gain a greater appreciation of these gifts. And we begin to realise how precious those gifts are only when we lose one of our senses or someone close to us loses one of theirs.
Because they are such wonderful gifts, we need to use them well, so they can challenge us in our integral growth. “How am I using these gifts of hearing, sight, and speech?”
A deaf man was brought to Jesus with an impediment in his speech. There can be (there often is) a link between the two; the inability to hear can affect how people speak. Jesus first opened the man’s ears, and then he could speak clearly. For us who have the gifts of both hearing and speech, it is also true that the quality of our speaking is in some way related to the quality of our hearing. The better we are at listening, the better we may be at speaking.
We need to listen well to each other if we are to speak well to each other.
What’s more fundamental – we need to listen to the Word of the Lord if we are to speak to the Lord and to speak the word of the Lord to others. It is only in listening to him that he can speak through us.