If you add them all up, there are apparently over 40 accounts of miraculous healings of Jesus recorded in the four gospels.

From this fact alone, it becomes clear:

To ignore or downplay Jesus’ healing ministry — would be to ignore a central aspect of his mission.

We might even go so far as to say that Christianity is a religion of healing.

But don’t take my word for it. Pope Benedict XVI in his book, Jesus of Nazareth says this: “Healing is an essential dimension of the apostolic mission and of Christian faith in general. Christianity… is a religion of healing. When understood at a sufficiently deep level, healing expresses the entire content of redemption.”

To simplify that even more…Christianity is about SALVATION.

And “salvation” is healing the whole person… body and soul.

As our beautiful first reading from Isaiah put it: “Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God! — He comes to save you! …Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared… the lame will leap, the tongue of the mute will sing!”

Your God comes to save you!

Your God comes to HEAL you! — Body, mind, heart and soul.

He comes to heal the WHOLE you…

Raise you up.

That’s His master plan. He desires your GOOD… your WHOLENESS…

The word “WHOLENESS” is closely related to the word “HOLINESS.”

To be holy is to be whole… to be fully healed.

Healed of sin. Healed of disobedience. Healed and set free from all evil influences. Ultimately, God plans to heal us… even from death itself!!! On the Last Day, He will raise us up from our graves, never to die again!

So when Jesus — the Messiah, the Anointed One — finally arrives on the scene… it’s no surprise that he brings healing.

In fact, HEALING is one of the main ways that Jesus demonstrates the power of the Gospel.

Let’s break down that word “demonstration.” It literally means “to point out” or to “show.” The Latin word “mōnstrāre” is right there — which is of course where we get the word “monstrance.” We use a monstrance in Eucharistic Adoration to literally “show” the Eucharist…to point out Jesus so that He can be seen and adored and glorified on the altar!!!

So to “demonstrate” the Gospel, then, means to “show forth” or “point out” the truth, the content of the Gospel — to allow the power thereof to be manifested and seen, that God might be glorified.

Over and over again, we see this kind of thing happen in the Gospel stories. Jesus and then later the apostles and the rest of the disciples not only announce the message of the Gospel with words — but then also demonstrate the Gospel with deeds of power. 

They go into towns and say: “Repent! The Kingdom is here!” But that’s not where they leave it. They then go on to demonstrate the message — they put their words into action. Action speaks louder than words, as I said in my homily last week, right? So they heal the sick, they cast out demons — they show that the Kingdom really is HERE.

Whenever Jesus claims that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, the proclamation always comes with power — It actually has power to bring about what it announces!

Otherwise, people would not have believed in Him. Without the miracles to back him up, he would have just been another religious nutcase on the streets.

Think about it for a minute:

If Jesus had told everybody: “I am the Resurrection and the life” — and then stood in front of Lazarus’ tomb saying: “Lazarus, come out!” …but nothing happened… nobody would have believed in Him.

If Jesus had stood up in the boat and boldly commanded to the storm: “Be still” …but nothing happened… nobody would have believed in Him.

In today’s Gospel…if Jesus had stuck his dirty fingers in this poor guy’s ears… and put spit on his tongue, looked up at heaven GROANING out loud… and then commanded: “EPHPHATHA… BE OPENED!” …and nothing happened… they would have thought he was crazy.

But in each of those cases, power DOES come forth from Him:

Lazarus the dead man DOES come out of the tomb, and people are ROCKED…

The storm DOES suddenly calm down, and they are left asking: “Who then is this, who commands even the winds and the sea, and they obey him?”

The mute and deaf man’s ears and mouth ARE opened, and the people are astonished — they say: “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Jesus’ proclamation — His preaching — is backed up with demonstrations time and time again.

He is who He says He is.

He even makes a point to draw attention to the fact that these demonstrations of the Kingdom are actually proof of his divine mission:

“If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me,” Jesus says….

“But if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works.”

Ok, now that we’ve established that Christianity is a healing religion — that Jesus performs real life miracles — actual SIGNS AND WONDERS — as part of his demonstration of the power of the Gospel and as a way of giving credibility to his claims, we can now ask another REALLY good question:

Why on earth does he tell this guy in our gospel today… to NOT tell anybody what happened? Why does he want to keep this miracle a secret?

We read in Mark’s gospel that “he ordered them not to tell anyone.”

This creates an interesting dilemma, doesn’t it?

Because if the Gospel proclamation comes with demonstrations of power in order to back up the truth of the message… then why does Jesus want to hide this healing? Why is he downplaying it? 

We know that elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus performs great signs and wonders right smack dab in the public eye… for everyone to see plainly.

So what’s going on here?

Here’s my take on it, and I think it’s backed up by the commentaries I perused while preparing this homily:

We all know that there is a danger in becoming so obsessed and fixated on miracles, signs and wonders that we go off the rails. There have been plenty of churches that have gone down that path — where the desire to see healings and fantastic manifestations of divine power becomes the absolute center of their theology and the focus of everything.

When this happens, Christians might even start to demand physical healings — we turn God into some sort of cosmic PEZ dispenser — a miracle vending machine that we can control at our own whim! Or worse — we start to blame people for not having enough faith when they are not miraculously healed.

All of this is obviously a perversion of the true Gospel, and it does NOT represent a Catholic theology of healing.

We know that Jesus is not JUST a miracle worker… He’s not a kind of sensationalist wizard who just came to fix everybody’s problems…

No, he came to be a Savior.

He came to be with us.

He is Immanuel… God with us.

And so, of course Jesus would not want to be put in a box. He wanted to avoid any misunderstandings about who He was and why He came to this earth. He wanted us to realize that any miraculous demonstrations of power were always meant to draw us into a deeper, more intimate friendship with Him. To lead us into conversion.

Miracles, therefore, are NOT superficial spectacles. They are not magic tricks meant to entertain us. No, they’re meant to be moments of encounter with God’s love and compassion. They’re intended to open up our hearts to repentance… to be healed down to the core.

And I propose that this is maybe why Jesus does what he does in today’s gospel. We read that “He took [this mute and deaf man] off by himself away from the crowd.”

It seems that Jesus wanted this man to have no distractions from the beautiful encounter he was about to have. He wanted one-on-one, heart-to-heart meeting with this person.

So imagine the scene — This guy was perhaps born deaf…maybe he never heard a single sound in his entire life… and now he is brought to a quiet place, where the first thing he hears… is not the noisy crowd whooping and hollering… but Jesus saying…

“Ephphatha.”

“Be opened.”

How amazing is it that the first thing this man ever heard was Jesus’ Voice.

And then, we can imagine — perhaps the first thing that this man ever spoke clearly — without any trace of speech impediment — was a word of praise and thanksgiving directly to Jesus… to the One who just healed him.

The privacy of this moment — the hiddenness of this healing — somehow makes it even more clear:

Jesus came to save this particular man.

Yes! There would be plenty of other amazing public miracles. But this one was supposed to be private, drawing attention to how personal Jesus wants to get with us. …How particular His love is for each and every one of us.

Jesus doesn’t want to just heal huge nameless crowds of people…

He wants to heal you.

He wants to forgive you in Confession.

He wants to anoint you in the Anointing of the Sick.

He wants to look at you as if you’re the only person that exists in the world.

That’s why I love praying for healing in the name of Jesus — It’s always a beautiful moment of encounter. It’s always a chance for that sick person to know that they are truly loved and surrounded by God’s goodness. Whether or not a visible healing happens right there… it doesn’t matter. It’s always a beautiful thing to pray for someone’s good. Someone’s wholeness.

I was at a Catholic conference this past summer in Toledo, and I went with a group of people from my parish. One of the parishioners who went has severe vision problems. He can barely see. He needs help being led around everywhere. 

At one point of the conference, we were prompted to pray boldly for his healing. We came with faith for a demonstration of God’s power. We surrounded him, laid hands on him, and I invited his teenaged son to lead us in prayer. And this boy reached out and touched his dad’s eyes, much like Jesus reached out and stuck his fingers in the deaf man’s ears from this weekend’s Gospel. And it was so moving to see this young man pray so fervently for his dad’s healing. It was glorious to see our entire parish group surrounding this man with the love of God.

But you know what? When we finished our prayer… and he tested his vision… his eyes were not healed. Not at that precise moment, anyways.

So… what do you think?

Did we fail?

Did we do something wrong? Did we pray incorrectly? Did this man not have enough faith to be healed???

Is God maybe not real because He didn’t answer us right in that exact moment in the way we hoped He would?

Of course not.

But I’ll tell you this: That moment was amazing. It was soaked with faith and joy. And the man we prayed for got up from that prayer praising God from the depths of his heart and thanking us.

Healing happened.

And one day, I’m convinced… that when that guy is raised from the dead… if not sooner… his eyes will see.

The Kingdom is at hand.

Some people might brush that off… Some might say: “See, God doesn’t perform miracles anymore, and we shouldn’t be so presumptuous to pray for them. Only those crazy churches expect supernatural stuff to happen!”

And to that, I would first say:

We believe that at every Mass, bread and wine become God. I’m pretty sure that eyes being healed is much easier to swallow than THAT.

Secondly —  even though, yes, there is that danger of becoming obsessed with signs and wonders… of turning God into that miracle vending machine… Yeah… that’s REAL… but there’s also the opposite danger — there is the danger of becoming closed off to the supernatural. To only believing in what is perfectly rationalistic, perfectly scientific, perfectly reasonable.

If that’s us… then we need to be opened — opened up to the God of Signs and Wonders!

EPHAPHTHA. Be opened. Be opened to the truth that the Lord DOES demonstrate the power of the Kingdom TODAY… that He’s still working miracles TODAY.

I love this quote from Fr. Matthias Thelen — the founder and director of Encounter Ministries — He says this: “We know that signs and wonders are NOT the whole Gospel… but we also know that the Gospel isn’t whole without them.”

And I think that strikes the right balance. Our Bibles would be missing something absolutely essential if we took a pair of scissors and cut out all the stories of miraculous healings.

We preach to a deaf world — a mute world — a  doubting and skeptical world that often does not know the love of Jesus.

Ephphatha. 

Be opened!

See that Jesus really is alive.

That His love is real.

And that He is still working mighty deeds even today.