"Ephpheta" (Be thou opened!)

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JMJ

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

And they bring to Him one deaf and dumb (Mk. 7.32). Before this scene related in today's Gospel (Mk. 7.31-37), Our Lord delivered the daughter of a Gentile mother distressed over the condition of her child who had an unclean spirit (v. 25). Hence, in the Traditional Rite of Baptism of the Holy Church, a solemn exorcism precedes the Ephphetha (Our Lord's command in Aramaic which means "Be thou opened," v.34, which the minister pronounces as he touches, what the Master did in the Gospel today, the ears with saliva) - but all of which are suppressed in the Neo-Catholic Rite of 'Baptism' (cf., our post "The Ultimate Delusion of Vatican II 'Catholicism'" on the New 'Catholic Theology' and its consequences).

A soul under the action of the devil (not necessarily possessed by the devil) is therefore said to be deaf and dumb. Deaf, that is, impervious to the Word of God and therefore walk not according to the Commandments of God and the Traditional teachings and moral discipline of the Church which, divinely constituted to be the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3.15) for all ages (The gates of hell shall not prevail against it - Mt. 16.18: 28.20; Jn. 14.16), the Eternal Truth commanded to be heard (cf., Mt. 18.17). 

Two Saturdays ago, in the 'red'-protest-prayer-rally called by the official Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines  against the UN-sponsored "population control" legislation (in the so-called interest of 'economic development' concern), cf., our post "Forgotten Triumph of Our Lady," a priest (a certain Fr. Melvin) addressed the faithful, in the presence of attending bishops, after the Communion part of the 'Eucharistic service': "To our President [a 'Catholic'], if YOU DO NOT WANT TO LISTEN TO THE BISHOPS AND PRIESTS, THAT'S JUST OK. To our legislators [majority of whom are 'Catholics'], if YOU DO NOT WANT TO LISTEN TO PRIESTS AND BISHOPS, THAT'S JUST OK, TOO..." How could they leave souls deaf? From one angle, that attitude only betrays the kind of pastors whom the hierarchy clothes with 'official priestly legitimacy'. Pastors deafened by the error of Liberalism cannot redeem souls deafened also by the same error. From another angle, the people that has always murmured and groaned against the yoke of Christ Crucified and His Church - desiring a convenient form of Religion allowing them to both enjoy God up there and the world down here - deserved their chastisement: heaping to themselves pastors who meet their longed-for 'up-to-date' form of Catholicism. For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears (2 Tim. 4.3). Because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying... (2 Thess. 2.10). 

The lie? "Even if you choose not to listen to God through the voice of His 'legitimate' ministers (cf., Mal. 2.7: Deut. 17.9,10,11-12; 21.5; 1 K 2.28; Jer. 33.22; Ezech. 44.23,24; Mt. 18.17), it is just OK" ["for the (g)od of all tender mercy and compassion understands your situation*" - leading one to the conclusion that disobedience is actually inconsequential!]. And so, the Word of God describes the miserable condition of those who are under the sway of the devil: deaf AND DUMB. Dumb, because they spoke not right (v. 35) - deprived of "the light of [God's] wisdom [symbolized by the imposition of the exorcised salt on the one to be baptized - suppressed also in the Neo-Catholic Rite of 'Baptism']... true knowledge... sound judgment... and a grasp of holy doctrine" (from the prayer on the last imposition of hands of God's minister in the Traditional Rite of Baptism).   
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* Here, God's goodness is offered as justification to propose Tillich's existentialism: God adjusting His truth and the moral discipline it ordains relative to man's existential situation together with what anguished men as a rule find thinkable and acceptable in this situation. Man, in his present psychological crises vis-a-vis a seemingly 'muted remote God' and the seeming contradictions in His religion, here replaces God still as the measure of what is true and therefore of what is good.