“Ephphatha” is the Aramaic word that Jesus utters when he heals this man, both deaf and mute. After touching his fingers to the man’s ear and tongue, he speaks this word while looking up into heaven. The scene that the Gospel of Mark lays out shows Christ holding this wounded man and connecting him back to God — the source of all life.

We see other stories in the Gospel where Jesus only needs to say the word in order to heal a person, but this miracle is, if anything, invasive. The hands of Christ must move into the wounded spaces; not simply to touch them, but to penetrate, to enter into the wound itself.

The healing of Christ is not on our terms. This story from the Gospel of Mark makes that clear. I chose the face of the famous Laocoön for this image to show the anguish we sinners demonstrate against Our Lord as He tries to reach out to heal us. Laocoön and his sons, one of the most famous sculptures in antiquity, hold the face of human suffering. Like Laocoön, we too rage against the work of the divine, but unlike Laocoön, the supernatural force that seeks work on us is the Lord.

But how do we know? When we are blind, deaf, mute, and wounded, how can we be sure that it is the hands of Our Lord reaching out to us, and not the snakes sent to punish us? I wish I could understand this. But the words that Christ says to this man seems to contain the way of understanding this mystery:

“Ephphatha.”