Twelfth Sunday after Trinity AD 2024

The deaf and dumb man in today’s Gospel represents the fallen man, that has preserved the inner longing for the truth and the eternal but is not able to achieve what he longs for, or even fully realize what he really needs.

In order to find our true selves, we need someone to guide us or at least support us. This is primarily the task of parents – to lead both by words and even more so by the example of their own lives. But it’s also the task of the whole society and especially the Church: to bring men and women, young and old, to the truth – just as in today’s Gospel the friends of the deaf and dumb man brought him to Jesus, who is the Way and the Truth and the Life.

However, this was only the first step. What followed was that Jesus “took him aside from the multitude” and healed him with His touch and word, “and straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain”.

We all need the personal touch of Jesus – through His Word and sacraments, through the Church. We cannot be Christians alone, apart from our fellow believers, apart from the Church, but we also cannot be it without an intimate, first-hand relationship with God.

God is the only one who can fulfill our longing for the truth and the eternal. Meeting God in Jesus Christ makes us to see what we really need. Jesus gives everyone, like that man in today’s Gospel, not just the ability to hear and speak, but to hear God, speak about God and praise God.