Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Fourth Sunday before Lent (8 February 2026), and Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are only five days away (18 February 2025).
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 7: 31-37 (NRSVA):
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’
Today’s Reflections:
Jesus returns from region of Tyre and Sidon, where he has healed the daughter of a Greek-speaking Syrophoenician woman in Tyre, which we read about yesterday (Mark 7: 24-30). In this morning’s reading, he is still in a culturally Hellenised region, the Decapolis. But, from a very dramatic healing, that I have compared with the best of Greek classical drama, we move to what is intended to be a very private, one-to-one healing, that was not even meant to be a sideshow.
There are two languages at play in these two readings: Greek and Aramaic. The single word Jesus uses in verse 34, Ephphatha (Εφφαθα) is not so much an Aramaic word as the Greek form of a Syro-Chaldaic or Aramaic word, meaning ‘Be opened’. It is as though Mark has to regularly translate the Aramaic words he hears so that they can be heard by his Greek-speaking readers (see Mark 3: 17; 5: 41; 7: 11; 14: 36; 15: 34).
But this word is so guttural that even in polite parishes it can sound vulgar as people try to read it out. No matter how polite they try to be, the double F (Φ) sound can sometimes cause blushes and giggles, or even embarrass the reader.
English is such a polite language, and the translators add their own polite priorities and good manners to how they translate what Jesus says in the original and very direct Greek into palatable, modern English.
During this week, we have heard a Gospel reading on Tuesday in which Jesus is being rude to some very religious people, who come with real doubts and with polite questions and end up being called hypocrites (Mark 7: 1-13). The blunt conversations continued on Wednesday (Mark 7: 14-23), with Jesus speaking about human waste, and then about fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride and folly … hardly safe topics for most Sunday services.
To add to that, in the Gospel reading yesterday (Mark 7: 24-30), Jesus later goes on to compare a woman who comes to him in distress with dogs, and he seems to call her daughter what amounts to – in the original Greek – a ‘little bitch’ (Mark 7: 24-30, 13 February 2025).
Then in the reading today, he meets a man who is deaf and dumb – and he sticks his fingers in his ears and spits on him. (Mark 7: 31-37).
It is interesting how Jesus calls this man aside for a private one-to-one. How did he do this? If the man is deaf, how could he hear what Jesus is saying to him, both in public and in private? In this area, as a deaf mute, how had he learned to speak both Greek and Aramaic?
Yes, with one, single, perhaps even coarse word, the man can hear and speak.
It has become very difficult for people in the US in the past year to speak out about events at the moment, with one disastrous and catastrophic edict following another. Children have been detained cruelly, family lives are being destroyed, protesters have been shot dead in their cars and on the streets. Many are now afraid to speak out in case they become be the victims of the next diktat signed in the Oval Office by that capricious and vengeful President. Who sees and hears what he does, but is afraid to speak out?
But if people do not speak out now, who is going to be left to speak out three years from now?
Perhaps one, simple, blunt and direct word from Jesus may empower some people to speak out before it is too late. That word may be εφφαθα. But perhaps, on the eve of Saint Valentine’s Day, we might also need to be reminded that that word may simply be ‘Love!’
I am reminded again of the words of the German theologian and Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), whose cell I once visited in Sachsenhausen:
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
The two healing stories of the mother and her daughter and the deaf mute find their context in – are sandwiched between – the two stories about feeding the crowds. The two feeding stories and the healing store in Tyre involve feeding with bread. Christ’s invitation to the Eucharist needs to be opened out, from being a rite of the Church to being a banquet for the world.
Only when we break down our limitations or prejudices, and when we are bold enough to speak out, can Christ’s healing message be brought to a world that cries out for God’s healing, God’s mercy, God’s justice … that cries out to be called into God’s Kingdom.
The Collect today prays that God who has ‘created the heavens and the earth ‘and made us in’ God’s own image my teach us ‘to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children.’
Today’s Prayers (Friday 13 February 2026):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Safe Routes’ (pp 26-27). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Bradon Muilenburg, Anglican Refugee Support Lead.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 13 February 2026) invites us to pray:
Inspire local leaders, the EU and UK authorities to choose hospitality over harmful policies. May decisions protect all who are stranded and in danger.
The Collect of the Day:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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