11 February 2022 Friday Week 5 in Ordinary Time

11 February 2022 Friday Week 5 in Ordinary Time

Our Lady of Lourdes (Optional Memorial)

St Gobnait, virgin (Optional Memorial)

1 Kings 11:29ff. The prophet Ahijah announces the breakup of David’s kingdom; ten of the twelve tribes choose Jeroboam as their king.

 1 Kings 11:29-32; 12:19

About that time, when Jeroboam was leaving Jerusalem, the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him on the road. Ahijah had clothed himself with a new garment. The two of them were alone in the open country when Ahijah laid hold of the new garment he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces. He then said to Jeroboam: Take for yourself ten pieces; for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “See, I am about to tear the kingdom from the hand of Solomon, and will give you ten tribes. One tribe will remain his, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.

Mark 7:31ff. Jesus cures a man who was deaf and dumb, and the people are amazed as his power.

Gospel: Mark 7:31-37

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. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

Paradise Lost and Found

The first reading tells of paradise lost; the gospel, of paradise regained. The text from First Kings fits into the long stretch of time in between the beginning and end of salvation history. In the paradise lost story (*1), the guilty man and woman become ashamed of their nakedness, whereas up to the time of their sin, they had experienced no unease in each other’s company and sensed each aspect of themselves as created to the image of God and as very good. The physical aspects of our earthly paradise show up again in the gospel, where, in order to cure the deaf and dumb man, Jesus put his fingers in the man’s ears and touched his tongue with saliva, and looked up to heaven with a groan. Jesus’ words and action, even his groan of distress over the man’s disability, manifest the human way by which the man was led back into paradise.

That Mark intends this scene to indicate the start of the final age, of paradise regained, is clear from hints later in the text. The phrase, “he makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” is from the prophecy of Isaiah, where “those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy.” The fulfillment of the messianic prophecies is at hand, when “desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom.. They will see the glory of the Lord.. Here is your God, he comes with vindication, to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared (Isa 35:1-5).

In fulfilling the prophecy, Jesus is flashing a hint of universal salvation, something already observed in yesterday’s story of the Syro-Phoenician woman. We can contrast the two paradises, lost and regained. In Genesis man and woman, once they had sinned, realized that they were naked and felt ashamed. In the gospel, once the man’s hearing and speech are healed, every other impediment is dropped. With joyful spontaneity he forgets the injunction not to tell anyone. Not only the man himself, but everyone around him starts to proclaim the good news of what Jesus has acomplished. The gospel has almost a playful interaction here, since the more he urged them not to tell anyone, the more they proclaimed it.

The first parents left paradise and at once felt compelled to cover themselves with defenses against the other person. Fear of self and mistrust of the other inhibited the spontaneity and trust of their relationship. The man cured of deafness and dumbness seems to toss all restrictions to the wind, dancing, singing, leaping, shouting and proclaiming the good news. We lose paradise and we re-enter paradise as human beings with physical bodies and spiritual souls, but the Bible seems to focus more on the earthly expressions of joy rather than on its spiritual source.

In between the two paradisal scenes stands the story of how the kingdom of David is rent apart, when ten of the twelve tribes will transfer their loyalty from the house of David to Jeroboam. The northern ten tribes revolt in punishment for the excesses of Solomon and his son Roboam, but they will also be God’s instrument for preserving important Mosaic traditions and for advancing the prophetic movement. In that northern kingdom will emerge the first two of the classical, writing prophets, Amos and Hosea, and the paradisal section from Isaiah 35, quoted earlier, seems to come from a northern influence. It is clear that the outsider is not simply converted but brings a richness of insight into the mystery of God which we may otherwise overlook.