The passage Mark 7:31–37 presents Christ healing a deaf-mute man. The event takes place on the borders of the Decapolis, that is, in an area with a strong Gentile (pagan) presence. God’s love for mankind is not limited to one people or to a “space of religious safety,” but extends wherever a human person is wounded and thirsts for salvation.
People bring the deaf-mute man to Jesus and beg Him to lay His hand upon him. The Church sees here an image of intercession: no one is saved as an isolated individual, but within relationship, within community. Often others—parents, friends, brothers—support a person when he himself has no voice or strength. This is also the liturgical experience: we pray “for one another,” and the prayer of the Church becomes shoulders that lift up the weak.
Christ takes the man “away from the crowd in private” (ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου κατ᾿ ἰδίαν). This action is not a rejection of the people, but a refusal of a “theatrical show,” and an act of delicacy: God heals through a personal encounter. Grace is not an impersonal force; it is relationship. Stepping away from noise leads to inner stillness, so that space may be made for the word of God. Here we also see a connection with Great Lent: it is a season of withdrawal from excessive talk and distraction, so that the human person may recover the listening of the heart.
Then the Lord puts His fingers into the man’s ears, touches his tongue with saliva, lifts His eyes to heaven, sighs, and says, “Ephphatha” (ἐφφαθά), that is, “Be opened.” These gestures carry deep theological meaning. First, they show that salvation is not a magical act performed from a distance. Christ touches human nature, draws near to it, and takes it upon Himself. The healing happens in a manner that recalls the Mysteries (Sacraments) of the Church: matter becomes a bearer of grace. The saliva—something so simple and humble—reveals that God uses small things to accomplish great things, and that He is not ashamed to “get dirty” with our sickness, just as He was not ashamed to be crucified for us.
Christ’s “sigh” is not weakness, but an expression of compassion and sorrow for the human fall. Deafness and muteness are not merely physical problems; they become images of a spiritual condition. How often does a person fail to hear God—whether through negligence, through passions, or through inner hardening—and thus, since he does not hear, he cannot confess clearly? Speech grows weak; prayer becomes dry. Christ comes to open what has been closed: ears, mouth, and also the heart.
The word “Ephphatha” also has a baptismal resonance in the tradition of the Church. In ancient baptismal rites, there was a prayer asking for the opening of the catechumen’s senses, so that he might hear the Gospel and confess the faith. Great Lent is, above all, a season of catechesis and return. Even if we are already baptized, we are called to renew our baptism through repentance: for our spiritual ears to be “opened” again, for our speech to be cleansed from judgment and vainglory, and for the tongue to become an instrument of doxology and consolation.
In the end, the people say, “He has done all things well; He makes even the deaf hear and the mute speak” (καλῶς πάντα πεποίηκε· καὶ τοὺς κωφοὺς ποιεῖ ἀκούειν καὶ τοὺς ἀλάλους λαλεῖν). This phrase recalls creation: God formed all things “well.” Christ, therefore, is not simply a wonderworker, but the Creator. Great Lent introduces us precisely to this path: from distortion to renewal, from the silence of sin to the voice of confession, from the deafness of the heart to the hearing of God. And when we arrive at Holy Week, we will see that the spiritual journey passes through the Cross and the Resurrection—there where Christ opens our closed life once and for all and grants us new hearing and a new word, within His Church.
+ Metropolitan Nektarios of Hong Kong and South East Asia
