“And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him.” – Mark 7:32 In our Gospel passage today, Jesus heals a man who cannot hear or speak. He is essentially cut off from communicating with others. But Jesus is able to communicate His healing touch to the man. Notice that Jesus takes the man aside privately. Healing is one-on-one work. Then Jesus touches…
You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. Mark 1:11 Imagine yourself in our Gospel passage today. You are standing on the bank of the Jordan River. John is baptizing people, and Jesus appears, asking John to baptize Him. He enters the river and is submerged into the water. When He comes back up, you see the sky being torn open (cf. Mark 1:10). What does that look like? Does it make…
In today’s Gospel reading, we hear how Jesus restored the sight of the man born blind. Just as David was anointed with oil and received the spirit of the Lord in our first reading (1 Samuel 16:13), Jesus anointed the blind man with clay, a combination of the earth and Jesus’s spit: “…he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes…(John 9:6). Recall that God formed…
At your Baptism, you were washed and reborn as a child of God, set apart from the world as members of Christ’s Church, and anointed to be a light to the whole world. On the day of your baptism, you were “born of water and Spirit” (John 3:5). Imagine: the priest poured holy water over you to wash you from original sin; he anointed you with sacred chrism oil, signifying the gift of the Holy…