"Ephphatha!"

 

Then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,"Ephphatha!"-- that is, "Be opened!" -- And immediately the man's ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly.

Mark 7:34 - 35

For a Catholic in the pre-Vatican II church, miracles were part of the stuff of life, as were novenas, mysteries of the rosary, stations of the cross, miraculous medals, scapulas, daily Mass, fasting. As a pious young boy I prayed for miracles from Marcellin Champagnat, Peter Chanel, Bernadette Soubirous, Gemma Galgani, Maria Goretti, Martin de Porres, Therese Martin, Francis Xavier, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Bernadone. With sufficient faith and devotion a miracle could be wrought and attributed to the intercession of Our Lady or one of saints.

The miracles of the New Testament are divided into the miracles that witness to Jesus (eg the Incarnation); healing miracles, nature miracles, exorcisms and resurrections. The miracle stories have a purpose in scripture, most often they are a response in faith – itself the transformative moment for the audience, the person seeking healing. There is an enormous amount of scholarship that investigates the historicity of the miracle stories, but I suspect that much energy is wasted in seeking objective proof as to whether or not they happened. Of more significant interest is the subjective proof. What happened to the audience? What happened to the person healed? What does the story say to you and me?

You and I know that gazing into the face of your newborn child is nothing short of a miracle, walking into the sunset with your loved one hand in hand, entering St Peter’s Basilica for the first time. The miracle happens to you. There is a gentle but beautiful moment when we recognize the preciousness of life, the fragility of who we are, the brilliance of the world in which we live.

The scriptures use a rich variety of words that we translate as ‘miracle’, but which are somewhat nuanced. For example signs, wonders, great deeds, works (of God), amazement – and this makes sense of the small and great miracles that surround us. Seeing these everyday miracles is a perceptive, subjective experience. On the other hand the church has an elaborate bureaucracy and procedures for establishing whether a miracle has taken place – and whether or not it is attributable to the intercession of a saint.

In healing the deaf man with a speech impediment, Jesus orders those who witnessed the miracle to tell no one. But quite contrarily, The more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it (Mark 7:36). Because miracles transform those who have faith, as in the church today, they must be acclaimed. If we cannot see them, then Jesus’ message to us is: "Ephphatha!"--  "Be opened!"