Home 10 Minutes with Jesus 10 minutes with Jesus. Today: Speak Lord, I´m listening.

10 minutes with Jesus. Today: Speak Lord, I´m listening.

by 10 Minutes with Jesus

10 minutes wih Jesus are group of Catholic priests who share friendship with Jesus, plus keenness to help young people of all ages to learn the art of loving Jesus and speaking to Him. You can find them in WhatsApp, Spotify, Ivoox, Telegram, Goggle Podcasts and Apple Podcast. Every saturday, we are going to share one meditation by 10 minutes with Jesus. Enjoy it.

My Lord and my God. I firmly believe that you are here; that you see me; that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of Prayer fruitful. I imagine that Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me well.

Going to Sidon

Wwe have a passage from the gospel Saint Mark that tells us about Jesus going into the region of Tyre and Sidon on the lake of Galilee in the Decapolis area, and there they bring to him a deaf man with a speech impediment. And they plead him, they plead Jesus to lay his hands and heal this man. We are told that he puts his fingers into the man’s ears and he spits and touches his tongue and he looks up to heaven and he groans his size and he says EFattah. And immediately, the man is healed as ears are opened and it’s a beautiful miracle. But perhaps we can ask ourselves why did they bring this man and beg him to lay his hands. Why did he this laying of the hands they seem to know that that this gesture would be effective? Jesus had just been laying his hands would heal. And this is probably because they had seen this gesture before the simple gesture of laying on the hands is it seems to signify the transmission. So I’m gonna power a grace from one person to the next like a sort of electrical current and there’s like a connection there that is established. And of course, that connection can only happen if there is real contact a real connection, and we see this of course when Israel blesses his sons Manasseh and Ephraim.

Book of Kings

He does that he blesses them like that by the with his hands and also you know in the Book of Kings we have a story where Naaman wanted to be healed of his leprosy and he asked that you know,. Elisha imposes hands or you know lay his hands on him. But in the end Elisha told me go and bathe in the Jordan. That’s how he was healed, but his idea of laying on the hands was a known gesture and indeed. It’s one of the most powerful moments in the anointing of the sick, when the priest lays his hands on the sick person. I know his head and I’ve experienced that the sick person you know is weak and discouraged and maybe even angry and maybe smitten with fear.  So you lay your hands gently on this person is suddenly because on the older all the tension goes away and all the fear dissipates. And often person and all those around they begin to pray that it to weep and even the priest himself starts to weep. I mean, I’ve had to resist you know breaking down. It’s a very moving moment and one sense is really quite deeply, that there’s some kind of healing really going on. It’s an essential healing not something that is merely cosmetic or simply superficial. So Lord, with this laying on the hands, you enter that soul. You purify it with your goodness, with your mercy. So we can just thank you now for that beautiful sacrament of the anointing of the sick. But the problem with this guy, the deaf guy, who’s deaf and mute, well is that he had a speech impediment like so he couldn’t really talk that well and nor could he hear. And so here Jesus takes him aside and gives him a bit of privacy and with that spittle he touches his tongue, sticks his fingers in his ears and everybody knows of course that saliva has healing properties. But the effect of course is totally disproportionate. You know just from a little that you put a bit of saliva on a wound, okay, but you can’t completely hear heal a guy like that. I mean that’s completely disproportionate. So that was quite impressive but you may have experienced this talking to somebody, who can’t hear you know or can’t speak properly who’s deaf. It can be frustrating when you really don’t understand someone.

Try and try

They try to make sense. They try to make themselves understood. And they mumble something and it doesn’t seem to make sense. Maybe they get mad because you don’t understand. And you get mad or you know get kind of agitated because they maybe are just sticky lating you, may be using sign language which you don’t understand and it can be quite stressful. And maybe this is somewhat what happened with this man, but of course, our Lord brought peace with his healing. I read a few years ago an anecdote about a mother and her sick child who was severely disabled and he’d become quite cranky. And he complained a lot because of his ailments and he became increasingly difficult for his mother. So she prayed and prayed that he would be healed, and of course communication was difficult and she told him to pray to God that he’d be healed of course he did, but he stayed the same and so he got just progressively more frustrated with life. And the poor mother was really at her wits end and so one day she found out about the shrine of Lourdes and France and so she decides to take him there. As a kind of a last-ditch effort and last-ditch opportunity to see if he can be healed. And so she brought him there with his with his wheelchair into an area with all these sick people and a priest is coming down in procession with the Blessed Sacrament.

The song and the candles

And the crowd is singing and their candles and stuff and she looks over she´s, she sees the priest coming down and she begins to pray intensely: “Jesus please heal my boy please I beg you. Heal him. I’m at my rope at the end of my rope. So as the priest gave the blessing of the Blessed Sacrament, gave the benediction, she boughs her head very reverently and everybody else – and her son to bounce and after the blessing is given she turns to her son she saw that he was smiling and his face was completely radiant. She says my son, have you been healed. “No mom I’m the same but I prayed for that boy over there, with the brace over his head, he looks like he’s in pain, he seems to need it a lot more than me. So I pray for his healingt. She was like shocked. She’d never seen such words of kindness from her son truly. Well he’d been healed but not in the way that she had expected.

God is always listening

But you are always listening to me. You’re always listening to my pleas. But I don’t always seem to get answered. But is it possible or did you have answered me in ways that I’m perhaps unaware? Have I really listened to your word? Remember that Pharisee who invited Jesus to dine at his home. Simon the Pharisee. And suddenly this woman comes in and bathes the feet of Jesus with her tears and dried them with her hair. And Simon sees this and he starts thinking badly of Jesus and he thinks badly of this woman. You know he thinks she’s a sinner and he was a completely oblivious to her contrition and he did not pick up the signs of her contrition at all. So Jesus said to him: “Simon I have something to say to you”. And Simon says: “Speak master, speak. Isn’t that amazing that the Lord always has something to say to us? He has something to say to you, to me, something very specific. He can say something to you today, to me. He has an important message. It’s perhaps marked urgent but we don’t always hear it. We’re perhaps deaf to his messages and you’ll notice that Mark includes the Aramaic word that Jesus himself used in the healing of the other deaf man. The word was F theta, which means be opened, and it’s one of the handful of other times, where that happens you know. Llike Abba Potter and lol do lemon, lemon sabachthani on the cross. You know other times it kind of suggests that people remember the sound of the actual moment when it happened. The very instant when this divine current passed through, that man’s ears, the Deaf man’s ears, and the first words that the deaf man would have heard which he never would have heard anything before. But now, he heard F theta be opened years later. People will remember the sound, maybe the intonation, the intensity, the emotion. Even the deep sigh as he looked up to heaven as the Lord looked to heaven. The groan you could say it’s a touching moment and shows how the intimate connection that the Lord had with this man. And Pope Benedict said that the man’s ears the opening of the man’s ears in the man’s mouth why by doing that I Christ is foreshadowing his call for all mankind to hear the word and respond in faith. What words have you heard from the tabernacle from reading scripture? Is it true that a word will jump out at you today? Perhaps some people remember by heart their wedding vows and the very tone of their voice over the voice of their spouse when they said. It everyone has a very unique sound of a voice and Jesus said F theta opened in and he said it in a very characteristic way, maybe like people from a fire number or something let certain accent and now he speaks to you and me from the tabernacle, from scripture or just on our own in mass and he’s saying to you and me as he did to Simon.  I have something to say to you and we can say Lord speak.

The end

I give you thanks my God for the good resolutions affections and inspirations that you’ve communicated to me during this meditation: I ask your help to put them into effect. My Mother immaculate, Saint Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Your contribution help us to continue with our mission
God Bless You!

 

Digital Missioners Donations

 

 

 

Related Articles

Leave a comment