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.
The healing of spiritual deafness occurs when the Lord touches our hearing and everything that prevents us from hearing the voice and inspirations of the Lord falls to the ground, but also that from then on leads us to hear and begin 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, we want to make clear how important the healing of all spiritual deafness we may be experiencing is, because without hearing, we will not even have faith, for 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 Isaias crieth: O Lord, who hath believed our report? (Is 53:1) Faith then cometh by hearing. And hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard? Yea, verily, their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. (Ps 18:5) I say then, hath Israel understood? First, Moses saith: I will move you to envy by them that are not a nation; and I will provoke them to anger by a foolish nation. (Dt 32:21) And Isaias crieth unto Israel: The Lord hath given you the spirit of slumber: to your princes he hath closed your eyes, and hath covered your heads. (Is 29:10) And the vision of all hath become unto you as the words of a book shut up, which when they give to a learned man to read, he saith: I cannot, for it is shut. And when it is given to a man that is ignorant, he saith: I cannot, for it is not written. (Is 29:11)" (Rom 10:14-20)
Let us perceive together a reality that is clearly visible 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 all deafness that we may have been experiencing for a long or short time. 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 HEEDED THE GOOD NEWS! AND MOST OF THE TIME WE ARE AMONG THAT NUMBER BY OUR OWN CHOICE, NOT HEEDING THE VOICE OF THE LORD; BUT OTHER TIMES BECAUSE WE ARE DEAF, BECAUSE THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT PREVENT US FROM HEARING THE WORD, FROM ALLOWING THAT WORD TO HEAL US, GENERATE FAITH IN US AND STRENGTHEN US.
How many times have you and I heard the Word of God and not given it credit, not welcomed it, not paid attention, not cared about its message, not let it generate life in us? Did it go in one ear and out the other?! These and many others are signs that indicate how much we need to be healed.
Now, if faith comes from preaching and this is exercised by the Word of Christ, when we do not hear, consciously or unconsciously, the preaching of the Word of God which was meant to generate life, strength, and faith in us, to make us strong and give us structure to face the adversities and difficulties inherent to faith, and we then fall, we must review where the problem lies: in the efficacy of the word that is not producing the effects it was meant to produce in us; or in us, who do not hear this word of healing for whatever reason?
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 recognize their own smallness, that the problem lies within themselves?! Let us not be foolish!
Let the Lord touch us and let us desire to touch Him during this formation, 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.
"And when evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits by his word, and healed all that were sick." (Mt 8:16)
"And he healed many that were troubled with divers diseases. And he cast out many devils, and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him." (Mk 1:34)
"And all the multitude sought to touch him, because there was power gone out from him, and healed all." (Lk 6:19)
"And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that power had proceeded from him, turning about in the crowd, said: Who hath touched my garments? And his disciples said to him: Thou seest the multitude pressing thee, and thou sayest, Who touched me?" (Mk 5:30-31)
And when we think or believe that it is an exaggeration on the part of the apostles Matthew, Mark, and Luke describing so powerfully what Jesus did as He passed through places, we can stand firm and be absolutely certain of it, for it was Jesus Himself who said He healed even when questioned by Herod.
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 Savior of humanity. Jesus is firm and knows what He is doing out of love for the people of God.
"And there came to him the Pharisees, warning him and saying: Go, get thee hence, for Herod will kill thee. And he said to them: Go, and tell that fox: Behold, I cast out devils, and do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I am consummated." (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 deaf-mute, which relates to today's topic and that of the next post, where we will reflect on spiritual muteness.
"And he went forth again from the borders of Tyre, and came by the way of Sidon to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the quarters of Decapolis. And they bring to him one deaf and dumb: and they besought him that he would lay his hand on him. And taking him from the multitude apart, he put his fingers into his ears, and spitting, touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he groaned, and said to him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And immediately his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosened, and he spoke right. And he charged them that they should tell no man. But the more he charged them, so much the more did they publish it, And were astonished with exceeding great admiration, saying: He hath done all things well: he hath made the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak." (Mk 7:31-37)
OHHHHHHH 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 deaf-mute. We need to let the Lord open our ears, both physical and spiritual. Jesus, our Lord, wants to say to me and to you: EPHPHATHA!
What does Ephphatha mean? And why or for what reason would it be necessary for Jesus to say this 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 ye this, my beloved brethren. And let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God. Wherefore casting away all uncleanness, and all excess of malice, with meekness receive the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if a man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he shall be likened to a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was. But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty, and continued in the same, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work; he shall be blessed in his deed." (Jas 1:19-25)
EVERY PERSON SHOULD BE QUICK TO HEAR, BUT SLOW TO SPEAK AND SLOW TO ANGER. WE MUST CONVERT THIS MORAL PRINCIPLE WE HAVE WITHIN US, WHICH COMES FROM THIS CENTURY, FROM THE CRAZY NEED TO SPEAK AND NOT KNOW HOW 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 public speaking, on speaking in public, on delivering 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 receive what we hear with more propriety, 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 desires and can accomplish in us, if we allow it, 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 encounters when entering our hearts through our ears, losing its power and effect, will have fallen to the ground.
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 block that needs to be broken; deaf because there is a kind of wax that the world has put 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 soul and heart with impurity. Jingles from funny or meaningless advertisements and commercials put wax in our ears, and the voices of the world that repeat consecutively engrave in our ears a message totally contrary to the voice, will, and Word of God.
All this creates a predisposition for us to welcome the voice or voices from below, from the earth, and creates resistance for us to hear the voice or voices that come from above, from heaven. Then we don't understand how we become uncomfortable with what the Bible says, with what priests, the Pope, or spiritual directors advise us, and we are tempted to reject it because it doesn't please our hearing.
Of course, we greatly need 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 made us predisposed to sinful pleasure and ill-disposed to holiness when it is not pleasing to the body, in order to be truly Catholic. But with healed ears, we can distinguish 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, it is true. 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. Of course, those who do not learn to appreciate silence will never enter into mysticism and attunement with God!
Accustomed to the world, what God tells us or inspires us is too weak for us to accept as absolute truth and apply in our lives, capable of transforming us. Concluding the famous Sermon on the Mount, our savior spoke once again about hearing.
"Every one therefore that doth hear of these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock. And the rain fell down, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock. And every one that doth hear of these my words, and doth them not, shall be likened to a foolish man that built his house upon the sand. And the rain fell down, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the ruin thereof." (Mt 7:24-27)
Many times Jesus told his parables and gave his discourses, always concluding with the following advice:
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." (Mt 13:9; 13:43; etc).
Likewise, Saint John, in the book of Revelation, draws attention to the messages with this counsel:
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says..." (Rev 2:7, 11, 29 etc)
Was Jesus perhaps making fun of those who have no ears (as in the case of a genetic problem of being born without ears or with deafness, or in the case of an accident where the person becomes deaf)?
Evidently not! God our Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, 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 passing 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 deaf-mute 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 provoke us, '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. Grant me the experience You gave to Saint Augustine so that I may 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 block that the devil may have placed or with his dirty hands in my ears has prevented 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 made my person over to Satan, so that I would not hear properly, to block my ears to God. I break and renounce all 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 (trace the sign of the cross on your ears) I consecrate my ears, physical and spiritual, to the Lord Jesus. My ears, my hearing, my audible perception are Yours, Lord. Alleluia!
I give You thanks and praise You, Lord, for touching me! The wax has fallen, the bonds, the contamination, the deafness has been 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 entrust our hearts with full confidence.
Let us have a grateful heart to the Lord.
Do not be afraid of silence and let this small song seal all healing within you.
'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; it is better that the word renounce and express itself with affection.' (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, assuming a healed way of listening.
May God bless us and grant us the grace to always hear Him!
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