Listening and speaking are the most basic actions in life. But is there anything as easy and difficult as listening and speaking?
Anyone who has traveled or lived abroad will know how important listening and speaking are. He remembers the time when studying in Europe and couldn’t communicate. He was envious of the dog that understood its owner’s words. ‘Oh, how great it would be if I could understand French like that dog!’
Listening and speaking are the basic skills we must learn from birth. How much effort did we put into communicating with our mothers when we were babies? Babies learn to communicate with their mothers, families, and the world. He imagines how difficult it must be for parents to teach their babies to speak and listen. However, no matter how difficult, the baby will have more trouble.
However, paradoxically, listening and speaking are also difficult as we age. This is the opposite of the difficulties we face when we are born. When we are babies, we don’t know anything, and it’s the first time, so it’s hard to learn, but when we grow older, we know too much, so it’s difficult. We have too much inside us, so listening and speaking properly is hard.
The Gospel of Mark contains a story about the healing of a deaf and mute man (Mark 7:31-37). Jesus took him aside, put his fingers into his ears, spit, touched his tongue, looked up to heaven, sighed, and said, “Ephphatha!” (Be opened!). Immediately, his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he began speaking properly. This story is based on a real event and has a spiritual meaning.
In the “Ephphatha Rite” in the “Baptism of Infants,” the officiating priest touches the ears and mouth of the baby being baptized and asks the Lord to allow the baby to hear the Lord’s word with his ears and confess his faith with his mouth. This also applies to adults. Being born again through baptism means seeing the world with new eyes, hearing with new ears, and speaking a new language with a new mouth.
It is important to note that listening and speaking are connected. If you were to choose which of the two is more important, most people would say listening. This is probably because listening is so difficult.
What do we hear? We hear countless sounds but also ‘words’, not just sounds. Listening to someone means that the words they speak to me are transmitted to my heart through my ears. Sounds pass, but words are transmitted to my ears through someone’s mouth and reach my heart. True conversation is only possible when human words, not sounds, are exchanged between persons.
However, words are not transmitted only through sounds. It is difficult to hear words transmitted through sounds but even more difficult to hear words transmitted through body language—wordless language. For example, a person who cares for a sick person must understand the words the sick person communicates in unspoken language and provide necessary help. The words of a poor and sick person, the words of a lonely or depressed person, the words of a person struggling in deep despair and wounds… Our listening will be a great comfort to them, and our ‘words’ to them can have the power to heal them. If the Lord is active in them.
Consequently, the need to listen to this wordless language. May the Lord say, ‘Ephphatha!’ Open our eyes, ears, and mouths so that we can hear the voice of the Lord and sing the love of the Lord with our mouths.
