Be Opened
- POPE BENEDICT XVI
There is not only a physical deafness which largely cuts people off from social life; there is also a "hardness of hearing" where God is concerned.
And this is something from which we particularly suffer in our own time.
Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God — there are too many different frequencies filling our ears. What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited to our age. Along with this hardness of hearing or outright deafness where God is concerned, we naturally lose our ability to speak with him and to him. And so we end up losing a decisive capacity for perception. We risk losing our inner senses. This weakening of our capacity for perception drastically and dangerously curtails the range of our relationship with reality in general. The horizon of our life is disturbingly foreshortened....
At our baptism [Jesus] touched each of us and said "Ephphatha" — "Be opened" — thus enabling us to hear God's voice and to be able to talk to him.... The Gospel invites us to realize that we have a "deficit" in our capacity for perception. Initially, we do not notice this deficiency as such, since everything else seems so urgent and logical; since everything seems to proceed normally, even when we no longer have eyes and ears for God and we live without him. But is it true that everything goes on as usual when God no longer is a part of our lives and our world?
As we gather here, let us ask the Lord with all our hearts to speak anew his "Ephphatha," to heal our hardness of hearing for God's presence, activity, and Word, and to give us sight and hearing. Let us ask his help in rediscovering prayer, to which he invites us in the liturgy and whose essential formula he has taught us in the Our Father.
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Acknowledgement
Pope Benedict XVI. "Be Opened." from Homily, Outdoor site of the Neue Messe, Munich (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006).
Published with permission of Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
The Author
Pope Benedict XVI is the author of Jesus of Nazareth, Vol II, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol I, Caritas in Veritate: Charity in Truth, Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi, God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est,The End of Time?: The Provocation of Talking about God, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, Salt of the Earth: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church at the End of the Millennium, God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, The Spirit of the Liturgy, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Introduction to Christianity, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, Behold the Pierced One, and God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life.
