Daily Gospel Reflection
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February 11, 2022
Jesus left the district of Tyre
and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee,
into the district of the Decapolis.
And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment
and begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man’s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
“Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”)
And immediately the man’s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly.
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
But the more he ordered them not to,
the more they proclaimed it.
They were exceedingly astonished and they said,
“He has done all things well.
He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
The deaf man in today’s reading was fortunate. He had people who loved him, wanted to help him, and didn’t want him to suffer anymore. These people cared about him enough to beg Jesus to heal him. And Jesus did!
It’s a difficult thing to watch someone you love suffer. In my case, I’ve watched my husband battle cancer three times. During that time, I witnessed him endure chemo, radiation, over 15 bone marrow biopsies, and two stem cell transplants. He has had over 20 surgeries on his vocal cords and multiple other viruses and diseases, too numerous to name all due to his cancer battle.
I have continually prayed and asked God to heal my husband or at least ease his suffering throughout it all, but he has received no miraculous, physical healing.
I find it entirely appropriate that today is also the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes. As most of us know, Mother Mary appeared to St. Bernadette 18 times between February 11th and July 16th, 1858. Since then, the grotto where Mary appeared has become a destination for pilgrims from around the globe. Many such pilgrims are there hoping to be healed by the miraculous spring water and baths of Lourdes. Some recover and some do not.
It’s perplexing why some receive the miraculous gift of healing, and others continue to endure. In meditating on this mystery, I have often considered the words of Pope Saint John Paul II: “Each man, in his sufferings, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.”
Offering up our suffering won’t earn forgiveness for our sins, but what if it can reduce what we owe due to our sin in how we persevere and carry it? So maybe, while we might pray for physical healing and an end to suffering, a true and no-less real, spiritual healing comes in the redemptive walk of carrying our suffering as Christ carried his own.
Prayer
The beautiful sounds of daily life around us, O God, are often muted by the noise of clamor and din. Indeed, it is frequently difficult to discern the wisdom of your Son Jesus amidst such distractions. In the Gospels we learn of his compassion for those who could not distinguish the beauty of natural sounds. With a divine touch he would heal them. Admitting our own hardness of heart and hearing, O God, we long to hear the sounds of mercy and forgiveness that surround us each day. This we ask through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
On February 11, 1858, a poor 14-year-old shepherd girl named Bernadette Soubirous was collecting firewood near Lourdes, France. She saw a bright light, and Mary appeared before her in a natural hollow of rock in a cave on the shore of a river.
Mary appeared with a youthful face, and she wore a white garment with a blue belt and carried a rosary. Over the course of 18 appearances, she identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. Mary told Bernadette to drink from a spring within the cave and to tell Church authorities to build a shrine on the site. Since those appearances, more than 200 million pilgrims have visited Lourdes, many reporting cures from the miraculous spring.
Father Sorin visited Lourdes, France, on one of his many trips back to France in the late 1800s to confer with the Holy Cross community. He was moved by the display of faith he saw there and began conversations at Notre Dame to construct a replica shrine on campus.
Notre Dame’s Grotto was constructed in 1896 (after Sorin’s death) and replicates the shrine at Lourdes on a one-seventh scale. A stone from Lourdes is implanted in the Grotto wall. The other boulders were unearthed from nearby farm fields, some weighing two or three tons. Workers, in digging the foundation, opened a spring of water in the same relative position as the miraculous spring that emerged at Lourdes—that spring now flows through the fountain on the left side of the Grotto.
In addition to the Grotto, Our Lady of Lourdes is depicted in a large mural in the Basilica, shown in today's featured image.
Our Lady of Lourdes, who brings healing and hope to your children in France and throughout the world—pray for us!