One Minute Reflection – 11 August – Saint Susanna & Tiburtius – Readings: Ps 67:6 67:7 67:36, Ps 67:2, 1 Cor. 15:1-10, Mark 7:31-37
And looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, Ephpheta, that is, Be opened. And his ears were at once opened, and the bond of his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak correctly.
Mark 7:31-37
REFLECTION – Let us take a close look at what makes someone deaf. The first couple, our ancestors, were the first to become deaf because they gave an ear to the Enemy’s insinuations and paid attention to his words. And we follow them to such an extent that we cannot either hear or understand the eternal Word’s lovable inspirations. And yet we know that this eternal Word is at the depths of our being, so unspeakably close to us and within us that our very being, our own nature, thoughts, everything we can name, speak or understand is not so close or so intimately present to us as is the Word eternal. And this Word never ceases to speak in the human creature who does not hear it all because of the great deafness with which he is afflicted. At the same time, he has been so afflicted in all his other faculties that it has also made him dumb from it, unable to know himself. If such a one would speak of his own interior life, he would be unable to, not knowing where to find it or understanding his own way of being.
So what is this harmful whispering of the Enemy? It is all the disorder he lets you see beneath the shimmering of his side, persuading you to accept it by using your love or quest for created things, for the things of this world and all that belongs to it: goods, honors, even friends and relatives, even your own nature, in fact anything that conveys a taste for the good things of this fallen world. All these are what make his whisperings.
It is then that Our Lord comes: he puts his holy finger in man's ear and, with the saliva of his tongue, causes him to regain his speech.
Fr John Tauler (Sermon 49)
PRAYER – May the constant protection of Thy holy Martyrs, Tiburtius and Susanna, support us, O Lord, for Thou never fails to look mercifully upon those ,whom Thy have given the help of such intercession.Through Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord, Who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
AnaStpaul 