Sep 9, 2012 / 10:29 am
Pope Benedict XVI says that the public ministry of Jesus Christ is encapsulated in one "small but very important" Aramaic word: "Ephphatha."
"'Ephphatha – be opened,' sums up Christ's entire mission," said the Pope in his midday Angelus address Sept. 9.
"He became man so that man, made inwardly deaf and dumb by sin, would become able to hear the voice of God, the voice of love speaking to his heart, and learn to speak in the language of love, to communicate with God and with others," the Pope explained.
Speaking to several thousand pilgrims gathered at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, Pope Benedict dwelt upon the Sunday reading from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus cures a deaf man in the non-Jewish area known as the Decapolis, between the coast of Tyre and Sidon, and Galilee.