The link between the healing of the deaf-mute and the Agony in the Garden
Christ’s groan before healing the deaf-mute reveals the sorrow, humility and hidden power behind every miracle—and the danger of misusing restored gifts.
When Christ heals a deaf-mute, he uses seven preparatory acts, culminating in the 'ephpheta' – which the Church retains in Baptism today.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How the groan of Christ reveals the cost, danger, and sorrow bound to healing.
That humility hides divine power, yet often provokes greater wonder and praise.
Why this cure was double—restoring both the faculties and their effortless use.
He shows us that even the smallest actions of Christ carry layers of meaning—personal, sacrificial, and eternal.
For more on the context of this incident, see Part I.
The Deaf and Dumb Healed
The Training of the Apostles, Vol. IV, Chap. XV
St. Mark vii. 31-37
Story of the Gospels, § 77
Burns and Oates, London, 1885
Headings and some line breaks added.
What Christ's seven steps in healing the deaf and dumb mean for Christians today
The link between the healing of the deaf-mute and the Agony in the Garden
Interpretations
It is only natural that many interpretations should have suggested themselves of the details of our Lord’s action in this miracle, especially in the most prominent and unusual features of His conduct, such as the application of His fingers to the ears of the afflicted person, and the like, and also the groan which He is said to have uttered before performing the miracle.
The first feature has been explained as signifying the instrumental character of the Sacred Humanity of our Lord in the healing of the ills of mankind, whether physical or moral.
The groan may have various significations. It may simply represent the intensity and fervour of prayer. It may represent the prospect of the endless miseries entailed on the human race by sin, which brought death into the world, and all other physical miseries short of death, and leading up to it, of which the infirmities under which this poor man laboured might be taken as typical specimens. It may represent the pain at which the redemption of the world from the consequences of sin was to be wrought out in the Passion of our Lord. It may represent the misery of the sins which have been and can be committed by the senses in the use of which this sufferer was deficient, senses given to man for the noble purpose that he should glorify his Maker thereby.
Thus our Lord may have had present to His mind, as He had in the Agony in the Garden, the specific offences against God of which the senses of hearing and speaking were to be the instruments, and the danger which might accompany the restoration of the gift of their free use in this particular case. All the misery which made the redemption of the world necessary, all that that redemption would cost, all the sins for which the Redeemer would have to atone, and the little profit that was to follow from His sufferings in particular cases, might form the subject of grief to our Lord, and might be expressed by this groan.
Completeness of the miracle
The cure of this poor man was instantaneous and complete. In the case of the absence of the faculty of hearing, there will always be a great difficulty in the use of the faculty of speech, and when such faculties are recovered naturally, after having been paralyzed by disease for some time, it is usual for the full use of them to return only after an interval of practice and exercise. The miraculous character of the cure is therefore attested by the suddenness and completeness of the recovery of the use of the faculties.
Thus it is well to remember that there was here, therefore, a double miracle, in the restoration of the faculties themselves, and in that of their easy use, just as there was a double miracle when our Lord stilled the tempest on the Lake, and there was immediately a great calm, which could not have followed at once naturally.
The people making it known
Our Lord had more reasons than one for desiring that the miracle should not be made known.
In the first place, there was His own continual practice of humility, the hiding, when it was possible to hide, the great powers which He had exercised, unless there was some positive reason for their being made known. Moreover, in the present case He was seeking to remain hidden for reasons of His own Divine prudence, and He was in that part of the country for that special purpose.
‘And He charged them that they should tell no man.’
But the charge is considered by many of the commentators as the expression of humility, a charge which those to whom it was given might disobey without serious sin.
‘But the more He charged them, so much the more did they publish it, and so much the more did they wonder, saying, He hath done all things well, He hath made both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.’
It seems as if the Evangelist dwelt in mind on the manner in which the avoidance of vain glory and the study of humility makes men meet with all the greater commendation, as if a matter which, under ordinary circumstances, might have become gradually and slowly known, had been swiftly and widely propagated on account of the earnest entreaties of our Lord that it should remain entirely hidden from men.
The details of the miracle, as well as the cure itself, were spread abroad, and probably all the beautiful and significant actions which had occurred in the course of our Lord’s dealings with the sufferer, the leading him apart, the putting of His fingers into his ears, the touching his tongue with His own spittle, the looking up to Heaven and the groaning, all were enumerated and made matters of praise, as having each one its own proper meaning and its own marvellous effect. For by one action He had made the deaf to hear, and by another the dumb to speak, and the effect had followed perfectly and swiftly in each case.
It was no more exertion for our Lord’s Divine power to work these two cures at the same time than to work them separately. But men are always extremely unready to believe in the goodness and the power of God, and thus it was a matter of great wonder to them that having made the deaf hear, He had also made the dumb to speak.
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The Deaf and Dumb Healed
What Christ's seven steps in healing the deaf and dumb mean for Christians today
The link between the healing of the deaf-mute and the Agony in the Garden
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