After receiving a very great grace, we return to our normal rhythm, to continue our series on the healing of the senses. Today we will work on our spiritual hearing. To be healed, we need to purify our ears of all evil that has entered through them, every cursed word, every impurity, and ask the Lord for the grace of restoration.
We continue our journey through the healing of the senses. Here we take up our spiritual hearing. To be healed, we need to purify our ears of all evil that has entered through them, every cursed word, every impurity, and ask the Lord for the grace of restoration.
The healing of spiritual deafness comes when the Lord touches our hearing and everything that keeps us from hearing His voice and His inspirations falls away — and when, from then on, we are led to hear and to listen as Jesus listens. We must conform ourselves to Christ and embrace the fullness of life that He came to bring us.
To begin with, we want to make clear how important it is to be healed of whatever spiritual deafness we may be living with; for without hearing we shall not even have faith, since faith comes through hearing.
“But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching? But not all have heeded the good news. This is what Isaiah exclaims: Lord, who has believed our message? (Is 53:1) Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. I ask, then: Did they not hear? Indeed they did! Their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world (Ps 19:4). And I ask again: Did Israel not understand? Moses himself said: I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding (Deut 32:21). And Isaiah boldly says: I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me (Is 65:1).” (Rom 10:14-20)
Let us notice together a reality that has been plain since the Old Testament. The people of God have always been the same people, with their weaknesses and limitations, but we must have the courage to launch ourselves and surrender unreservedly to God, imploring the Lord for the healing of whatever deafness we may have been living with, for a long time or a short one. Let us not accept this life of deafness, because God gave us spiritual ears to use them. And He wants to heal us…
Saint Paul wrote that not all have heeded the good news. Most of the time we are among that number by choice, refusing to heed the voice of the Lord; but at other times it is because we are deaf — because there are many things that prevent us from hearing the word, from letting that word heal us, beget faith in us, and make us strong.
How many times have you and I heard the Word of God and not believed it, not received it, not paid attention, not cared about its message, not let it bring life to birth in us? In one ear and out the other? These and many others are signs that indicate how much we need to be healed.
Now, faith comes from preaching, and preaching is exercised through the word of Christ. So when we fail to hear — consciously or unconsciously — the preaching of the Word of God, which was meant to bring us life, strength and faith, to make us strong and to give us the backbone to face the contradictions and adversities that belong to faith, and when we then fall, we have to ask where the problem lies. Is it in the word itself, which is not producing the effect it was meant to produce in us? Or is it in us, who for whatever reason do not hear this word of healing?
How many people blame and accuse God of having let them fall, regress in their journey, return to a life of sin, renounce the truth that could have saved them, and are unable to recognise their own smallness, and that the problem lies within themselves? Let us not be foolish!
Let the Lord touch us and let us desire to touch Him in this reflection, letting Him show how much He wants to heal us, revealing His infinite love through healing so that, by embracing a new way of hearing everything around us, the voices of the world and the voices of Heaven, we may be faithful servants of the Lord, like the Virgin Mary, for all who touch or are touched by Christ are undoubtedly healed.
“That evening they brought to him many who were demon-possessed. He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.” (Mt 8:16)
“He healed many, so that all who suffered from any ailment pressed around him to touch him.” (Mk 3:10)
“Wherever he went, into villages, towns or the countryside, they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.” (Mk 6:56)
“He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, from the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured. The whole crowd was trying to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.” (Lk 6:17-19)
And when we suspect that Matthew, Mark and Luke are exaggerating in describing so powerfully what Jesus did as He passed through those places, we can be perfectly certain of it — for it was Jesus Himself who said that He was casting out demons and healing, even as Herod was threatening Him.
When He was born, Mary and Joseph had to flee with the child Jesus because Herod wanted to kill Him (cf. Mt 2). Now that He had begun His mission, neither man nor demon could stop the King of kings, the Lord of lords and Saviour of humanity. Jesus is firm and knows what He is doing out of love for the people of God.
“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’ He replied: ‘Go and tell that fox, “I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.”’” (Lk 13:31-32)
Jesus is 100% God, He is all-powerful and wants to save us, heal us, free us, and give us full life; but He is also 100% Man, which is why He understands our nature, our weakness, the misery of our flesh, but also knows that we can be more than conquerors if we let Him act in our lives, because He is always with us, always by our side.
Speaking of the power of God, let’s take an example from the Holy Scriptures where our Lord Jesus Christ healed a person born deaf and dumb, which relates to today’s topic and that of the next post, where we will reflect on spiritual muteness.
Speaking of the power of God, let us take an example from the Sacred Scriptures in which our Lord Jesus Christ healed a person born deaf and dumb — an example that bears on our present subject and on that of the next chapter, in which we shall reflect on spiritual muteness.
“Again he left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the midst of the Decapolis region. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and begged him to lay his hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to Heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And Jesus 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 mute speak!’” (Mk 7:31-37)
Beloved brothers and sisters! We need to allow the Lord to place His holy fingers, with His wounded hands, into our ears just as He did into the ears of that person born deaf and dumb. We need to let the Lord open our ears, both physical and spiritual. Jesus, our Lord, wants to say to you and to me: Ephphatha!
What does Ephphatha mean? And why should it be necessary for Jesus to say it to us?
The Aramaic word Ephphatha that Jesus spoke means “be opened!” Jesus commanded that this man’s ears be opened because they were closed.
The ears of many Christians are often closed, perhaps not physically, but above all spiritually. Closed because of sins, closed because they are accustomed to the noises of the world, closed because they cannot perceive and welcome the God who speaks to us, closed because they hear many voices, but not the voice of God.
It is necessary to embrace the counsel of the great apostle of wisdom, Saint James, so that all scales, wax, and whatever else is making us remain deaf to the Lord’s appeals may fall away.
“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” (Jas 1:19-25)
Every person should be quick to hear, but slow to speak and slow to anger. We must convert the instinct we carry within us, which this century has taught us: the frantic need to speak, and the inability to listen.
We can perceive very clearly and sensitively that the world teaches us to speak but does not teach us to listen. There are thousands of courses on oratory, on public speaking, on giving speeches, on expressing oneself better, on making oneself understood through the right words, which is increasingly common nowadays (with the excuse of shyness or whatever the cause may be), but there is no course or anything in the world that teaches us to listen better.
Only with Jesus Christ, only by the grace of God, will we be able to experience, through personal contact with God, the restoration of our hearing. Only then will we be able to hear better, in a sensible way, and for us Christians, in a discerning way. With God, we will learn to hear what is appropriate and we will exercise what James teaches us.
It is self-control, spiritual balance, experience that will give us the grace to listen more than to speak, to take in what we hear more rightly, to learn to listen better, to educate our ears, to purify our spiritual hearing to listen to God and His word.
The healing that Christ wants and can perform in us, if we allow Him, aims to restore our hearing so that we may understand and welcome the Word of God. And to apply this in the practice of our lives. That is, the healing of spiritual deafness will help us to live the Word of the Lord, for the barriers that it often meets on entering our hearts through our ears — barriers that rob it of its power and effect — will have fallen away.
Because of the importance of listening, the devil keeps many Christians deaf. Deaf because they do not perceive how God speaks; deaf because they cannot embrace what is essential for faith; deaf because there is a spiritual blockage that needs to be broken; deaf because there is a kind of wax that the world has placed in our ears and renews every day through many things.
Worldly and secular music bombards our ears every day with subliminal and sensual messages, filling our souls and hearts with impurity. Jingles from advertisements and funny or nonsensical commercials put wax in our ears, and the voices of the world, repeating over and over, engrave in our ears a message totally contrary to the voice, will, and Word of God.
All of this creates a predisposition to welcome the voice or voices from below, from the earth, and creates resistance to hearing the voice or voices that come from above, from Heaven. Then we wonder why we grow uncomfortable with what the Bible says, or with what priests, the Pope or spiritual directors advise, and we are tempted to reject it because it does not please our ears.
Of course, we need a lot of conversion in many points and many areas of our lives, and we need to learn to fight against our will, weakened by sin, which has left us inclined to sinful pleasure and disinclined to holiness whenever holiness does not please the body. To be truly Catholic we need healed ears: only then can we tell right from wrong.
This is not new and should not sound strange to our ears, for the devil seems to be in control of what we hear and do not hear nowadays. We are very complacent, and that is the truth of it. This causes us to remain deaf or with our ears contaminated by the amount of noise that men and demons produce.
From a natural life, accustomed to hearing and distinguishing everything in a worldly and carnal way, we can no longer perceive or discern right from wrong, good from evil, noise from silence. Indeed, silence is the noise that many hate and flee from in every possible way. And of course those who never learn to love silence will never enter the mystical life, or come into tune with God.
Accustomed to the world, we find what God tells us or inspires in us too faint to accept as absolute truth and to apply to our lives as something able to transform us. Concluding the famous Sermon on the Mount, our Saviour spoke once again about hearing.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.” (Mt 7:24-27)
Many times Jesus told His parables and gave His discourses, always concluding with the same advice:
“He who has ears, let him hear.” (cf. Mt 13:9; 13:43)
Likewise Saint John, in the book of Revelation, draws attention to his messages with the same advice:
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says…” (cf. Rev 2:7, 11, 29)
Was Jesus perhaps making fun of those who do not have ears (as in the case of a genetic problem of being born without ears or with deafness, or in the case of an accident in which the person becomes deaf)?
Evidently not! God our Father, our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of God are drawing our attention to our hearing, to the way we listen, to shake us and make all the wax fall from our ears, to show us that we need spiritual healing to be able to hear, in case these words are going unnoticed by our ears.
May we have the courage and the desire to listen! Saint Augustine said that our desire is our prayer! If our desire now and later is to listen, without a shadow of a doubt God will listen to us, will attend to us, and will heal us. Shall we ask Him for this together!?
“Holy God and mighty Lord, I have realized throughout this post how deaf I am and have been. But I no longer want to remain this way. At this moment, I want to make the radical decision to break with everything that makes me this way. I want to hear, Lord! Touch me, heal me, free me from all deafness; restore my hearing to the way You intended when You knit me in my mother’s womb. My hearing has been corrupted since my childhood, Lord, and today I no longer hear correctly; I am influenced by everything I hear.
Jesus, Son of David, You who healed the person born deaf and dumb as well as so many others, saying Ephphatha; You who said in Your word that You cast out demons and performed healings today and tomorrow in the face of Herod’s threat; You who said, to shake us awake, ‘He who has ears, let him hear’; I ask You, out of charity and mercy, to come and touch me powerfully at this moment. I affirm and acknowledge my need to be healed because I can no longer distinguish right from wrong, according to Christian principles. I am very confused, Lord.
That is why I ask, Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, Your Son, that You act in me with Your Holy Spirit, to open every closure of my hearing. Open my ears to hear Your voice, Lord! Open my ears to welcome Your word. Break every resistance that the world has created in me to the things of heaven, to silence.
I renounce at this moment all noise, all subliminal messages, all profane music that fills my hearing with impurity and things contrary to what You want for me. Help me, Father. Extend Your hands of love and rescue me from this bottomless pit where I am, where I can no longer hear You. Give me the experience You gave to Saint Augustine so that I can say that Your cry broke my deafness. Call me by name, Lord.
I want to hear again in a Christian way, I want to have the grace of Your Spirit to hear as Jesus heard, welcoming what is good and rejecting what is evil; welcoming what is holy and rejecting what leads me to sin; welcoming what is appropriate for the state I am living in and rejecting what may even be good, but is for another time. I want everything in its time in my life, O God! Come to my aid now. I need You to do this (tell and ask in your own words, what is peculiar to your life and your reality).
I renounce now every spiritual blockage that the devil may have set in place, or that, with his dirty hands in my ears, has kept me from hearing Your appeals. In the power of the name of Jesus (place your hands over your ears) I command every spiritual prison, every evil attack on my ears, to be broken now; may all contamination be washed in the blood of Jesus and may I be free to hear the Lord. I break with every pact, alliance, or consecration of my ears that I made, consciously or unconsciously, or that others made of me to Satan, so that I would not hear properly, so as to stop my ears against God. I break and renounce all of this now in the power of the name of Jesus, in the power of the blood of Jesus, in the power of the wounds of Jesus. By the sign of the cross (make the sign of the cross on your ears) I consecrate my ears, physical and spiritual, to the Lord Jesus. My ears, my hearing, my whole power of hearing are Yours, Lord. Alleluia!
I give You thanks and praise You, Lord, for touching me! The wax has fallen away, the bonds are broken, the contamination is gone, the deafness is healed. I take possession of every touch, every healing, every liberation, every restoration, every power of Your Spirit that has been poured out upon me, that has filled me with life, that gives me new hearing to welcome the Word of God, the voice of the Lord, the inspirations of Christ. Glory to You, Lord, forever! Thank You very much for healing me. Amen!”
Let us glorify the Lord God and surrender our hearts to Him with full confidence, calling God our Father.
Do not be afraid of silence, and let these words of the saints seal all healing within you:
“The lack of silence dissipates the spirit, draws us away from prayer, and takes away the taste for Heavenly things.” (Blessed Joseph Allamano)
‘The lack of silence dissipates the spirit, separates it from prayer, and takes away the taste for heavenly things.’ (Blessed Joseph Allamano)
‘Holy silence allows us to hear the voice of the Lord more easily.’ (Saint Pio of Pietrelcina)
‘Be silent when you can, for when we are alone God speaks freely with our soul, and the soul is more willing to hear the voice of God.’ (Saint Pio of Pietrelcina)
“Silence is the language of those who love; better that the word give way, and let affection speak.” (Saint Clare of Assisi)
Supported by such great examples, sustained by the power of the Word of God, enveloped by the strength of prayer, and restored by the grace of the Lord, let us allow the Lord to complete the work begun in us, surrendering our free will more and more to Him, and taking up a healed way of listening.
May God bless us and grant us the grace to always hear Him!
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