MAN'S DEAFNESS TO GOD'S WORD

 SAINTS CYRIL, MONK, AND METHODIUS, BISHOP

Gen 3:1-8; Ps 32:1-2,5-7; Mk 7:31-37

Open Eyes and deaf Ears

The sacred author presents the temptation of Eve and Adam in today’s passage. The stage was right for the temptation of the male and female God made in his image and modelling into his likeness. Following the second account, the Yahwist account, we have seen the personal involvement of God in the making and training of man and woman. God introduced them to interpersonal life and relationships by separating Adam's androgynous consciousness into separate but complementary consciousnesses of the male and the female. Their interpersonal knowledge and relationships mirrored God, a community of divine Persons. As we mentioned yesterday, the knowledge and love of the spouses have the other as an end and aslo a path to God. They would not enter the path leading to God without constant consciousness and faith in the word of God. It is important to note that God prepared them to walk this path of the word of God by guiding them in their knowledge and naming of creatures brought into existence by the Eternal Word of God. He gave them clear instructions on the path to walk, which Eve recounted without mistake. ‘We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, “You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death.”’ She recited well but never meditated nor digested it.

Thus, she was caught off guard by the evil one, who cast doubt on the word of God in the mind of Eve. “No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The test was who Eve was to believe: God’s word against the serpent's words. The serpent had more chances of winning by targeting Eve. The woman is not ordered immediately to the word of God but to man as her head; God ordered the man directly to the word of God as his head. It would be difficult to shake her allegiance if the temptation were on her faithfulness to the man. Similarly, if the temptation were on man's allegiance to the word of God, it would be difficult to shake his faith. The woman’s consciousness is of the man first, before the word of God. Hence, it was easy for the serpent to get her captivated by the tree and its fruit in the man's absence. “The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So, she took some of its fruit and ate it.” The woman processes more through the eyes than through the ears. According to Paul, the devil did not deceive the man. He ate the fruit from his wife, not because he doubted the word of God but because he was unwilling to separate himself from his wife. The man’s weakness was his attachment to his woman, as he replied to God’s question.

The serpent opened their eyes to sin and evil by its subtle snare and closed their ears to the word of God. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realised that they were naked.” By disobeying the word of God and believing the serpent, they conceive the seed of evil and darkness. They enslaved themselves and their children to darkness, evil, and death. The fall was man and woman’s handover of their dominion over the material universe to powers of darkness and evil. Our disobedience to the word of God, which is life, is our knowledge of death and acquittance with hardship and toil. The gospel tells us that the Word of God became man to heal us of our deafness to the Father’s voice. “And they brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man’s ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And his ears were opened, and the ligament of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly.” Faith in Jesus Christ restores our human ability to believe the word of God and proclaim it with our whole life. We celebrate Saint Methodius, a bishop, and his brother, Saint Cyril, a monk. They were born in Thessalonica. They preached the faith in Moravia and translated liturgical text into the Slavonic language. Cyril died in Rome when the Pope called them back in 869. Methodius went to Pannonia, where he continued his evangelization work until he died in 885. We thank God for the gift which the two brothers were to the Church.

Let us pray: O God, who enlightened the Slavic peoples through the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius, grant that our hearts may grasp the words of your teaching, and perfect us as a people of one accord in true faith and right confession. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.