Imagine watching a video of today’s Gospel passage on YouTube. Would you place it in the category of “Amazing Videos of the World—32 AD”, or “How To Cure Hearing Loss Naturally”, or maybe “Don’t Try This At Home”?  On the face of it, the series of events are quite peculiar.  Jesus is in a neighborhood where He doesn’t belong when strangers bring Him a man who cannot hear and whose speech is unintelligible. These strangers ask Jesus to lay His hands on the man.  Jesus takes the man away from the crowd, first puts His fingers in the man’s ears, then spits on His fingers and touches the man’s tongue.  All part of a single fluid moment, Jesus then prays from the depth of His heart, and commandingly says “Be opened!”  And indeed, immediately the man’s ears were opened and his speech restored.  The whole scenario begs us, as followers of the Lord, to ask “Why there?” “Why him?” and most of all “What is Jesus telling me?”

Our First Reading from Isaiah gives us clues for the first two questions.  In it, the Lord tells those who are frightened, that God comes to save, to clear the ears of the deaf and allow the mute to sing.  In the Gospel passage immediately preceding this, Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoencian woman stretched even His own compassion and His understanding of the boundaries of who is included in God’s saving actions.  Not limited to the Israelites, Jesus’s salvation is intended for all.  So of course that would extend to places and people beyond His “neighborhood”; to, as St. James in our Second Reading says, show no partiality.  The criteria for receiving God’s salvation, insider or previously-considered-outsider, is revealed to be evidence of faith.  Lack of it is a non-starter.  Those who brought the man to Jesus in today’s Gospel displayed the faith they possessed.  But the deaf man’s faith needed testing.  That may be one reason Jesus pulled him off to the side.  It was as simple as the man’s willingness to go with Him. 
           
So, what is Jesus telling you in this passage?  The healing of the deaf man is recalled in the baptismal rite of every Christian with the words:   May [Jesus] soon touch your ears to receive his word and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”  As baptized Catholics we are meant to remember, hold closely, and witness the truth that with faith we and all others are included in God’s saving action.  Deafness is symbolic of all those conditions that lead us to be isolated, preventing us from participating fully in relationship with God and one another.  As disciples we can “Be opened!” through God’s grace.  May the YouTube video of our lives show moments where we, individually and as a community, were God’s compassionate healing words and hands in the world, just like those wonderful people who in faith brought the deaf man to Jesus.  Do n’t Try This At Home!