GOSPEL REFLECTION, FRIDAY, 5TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 13 FEBRUARY 2026

Mark 7:31-37.  In today’s gosp4el reading we have a very vivid incident of healing as Mark tells us.  The incident leaves his followers ‘astounded beyond measure’ because ‘he has done everything well.’  Jesus and his disciples had been in Gentile territory to the north of the Sea of Galilee.  Some scholars believe that this trip took several months.  It may be that this longish trip gave Jesus and his disciples the chance to be together for their further instruction. It was in that area that Jesus had healed a Gentile Syrophoenician woman’s daughter (Mark 7:26-30) after the mother’s faith filled pleading.   This took place immediately before today’s reading.   Jesus and his disciples then moved south to the region of ‘The Ten Towns’ (Decapolis) on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, another Gentile area. 

There they encountered a man who was deaf and mute.  Mark tells in vivid detail how Jesus dealt with him and healed him.  Unlike other instances of his healing which took place before crowds, in this instance Jesus too the man aside by himself and healed him there.  We understand certainly that this was physical healing, but we also understand that it has spiritual significance as well.  If the man were deaf he could not hear Jesus speak to him, and if he were mute he could not tell how he was cured.  With several gestures told in detail by Mark, Jesus spoke the word ephphatha meaning ‘be opened!’  At our baptisms today the officiant speaks the same word to the one who has just been baptised, touching their ears and lips just as Jesus did with the deaf-mute man, so that the baptised may now be able to hear and proclaim the Word of God! 

Jesus did not consider the deaf and mute man as a ‘case,’ but as an individual in dire need of mercy and compassion as someone with a special need and a specific problem.  He healed him in an intimate setting with the man alone before him.  Jesus then told his disciples to tell no one, but they did anyway.  People were ‘astounded.’  Jesus’ healings are not just about the one who is healed, but about the healer too.  They identify Jesus as the Messiah  prophesied by Isaiah (35:5-6) as the one by whom, “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped!”