In the first reading God speaks through Prophet Isaiah about the blessings of the
coming of the Messiah, the Christ. Lord says, ‘fear not, I come to remove causes of
your distress and give meaning to all diminishment you feel in life and lead you to your
wellbeing’. God wants to undo what destroys the beauty of creation and give a
freshness to the world; God dreams of a renewed world. It is from the darkness/malice
of human heart that arises forces that corrupt God’s image in everyone and his
presence in all that he created. Purification of our will or conforming to Christ’s will
brings healing to a wounded world. Healing the deaf and mute man Jesus invites all to
a new way of listening and understanding and to imitate Jesus who ‘has done all things
well’. He says to us, ‘ephphetha’ be opened that we may have healed senses, mind
and heart.
The people who brought the deaf man to Jesus were living the prayer of compassion,
reminding us that church is a fellowship and as St. James says, there is no room for
biases and discrimination in the church; church is a living experience of care, mutual
respect and Christ’s healing voice and touch to the weak and troubled. True story, how
Joachim lived the unbiased life, St. James exhorts us to live: Joachim was 36 when he
died. He was born in Sicily into a wealthy family. When he was fifteen he had a crisis.
He says: I wanted my own space, I felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction and was
constantly looking for something. I loved freedom too much and so I joined in with
everybody and nobody. I felt very empty inside. The summer of 1980 marked the
beginning of a change in his life. He found himself against his wishes at a Catholic
movement called Focolare in Rome. He says, that group of people let me touch a way
of loving that I had never known before. I didn’t believe that you could love everyone,
beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant. I used to make distinctions between one
person and another. I really was shaken by this knowledge that one can love everyone.
That gave me a freedom and transparency for the first time in my life. I wanted to get to
know people from the inside, the mystery of God in every human being. He said, my
neighbor’s suffering belongs to me, because I want to dry it up.
In 1994 he was diagnosed with cancer. He wrote: ‘you have come to me Jesus and I
want to celebrate your arrival. I am here. I want to love you’. He learned that the true
reality is not in seeing the illness, the human condition, but believe that God has laid
out everything with his love. Just before he died he wrote, ‘when I visited you Jesus in
the tabernacle, I came to know you saying to me, Joachim, be happy, I am with you
always. He was cheerful and luminous the day he died. His last words were: ‘for you
Jesus’. Let our prayer be: Help us Lord find the spiritual deafness and blindness that
disable us; heal us Jesus, open our inner eyes, ears and hearts; move us toward a
freedom to place your compassion and love at the center of our life, the grace that
moves us each day that we may do all things well!