Jesus performed many sorts of physical cures. But the gospels are always at pains to point out that the physical healing points to a spiritual reality. If someone is healed from blindness, it’s not just so that they can see, but so that they can perceive and acknowledge Jesus as saviour. If someone is cured of a withered hand or from being hunchback, it is so that they may stand upright and praise God. Similarly, the deaf mute in today’s story is all closed up in a world of his own, impervious to hearing God’s word and unable to praise him.

In this miracle Mark shows Jesus performing a sort of sacramental action. All the sacraments emphasize the saving value of a human gesture, of human interaction. Here too, Jesus “put his fingers into the man’s ears, spat, and touched his tongue…then he looked up to heaven and sighed.” Couldn’t Jesus have just uttered a single command to effect the cure? Of course he could. But it is also possible that these actions were remembered in the Gospel tradition as a guide to healing in the early Church.

The Aramaic word, “Ephphatha” means “Be opened!”, and in using it, Mark goes beyond the merely physical miracle of healing the deaf mute, to that line in the prophet Ezechiel: “Your mouth shall be opened, and you shall speak and no longer be dumb.” Even more, it is an allusion to one of the signs of the messianic times, as the prophet Isaiah describes it: “He makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.”

Having got back his speech, the man cannot hide his gratitude and wonder. Jesus forbids him to publicize the event, but the more he forbade him, the more the patient and the onlookers proclaimed the good news: “All that Jesus does, he does well !”