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We often hear the expression, “turning a deaf ear,” meaning that we choose not to hear something. In fact, according to linguists, the definition of NOISE is “that which we do not want to hear.” We have a penchant for ignoring what makes us uncomfortable. Today the Good News is that Jesus brings healing to the deaf person. We might ask if we are in need of such a healing. Do we need to "Be opened!"? Is there a noise that keeps us from hearing the Gospel imperatives of love and justice.I would propose that this may just be the case. There are so many instances when we as Christians are confronted with noise that drowns out our hearing the Good News. Often we are so preoccupied with our own problems and interests that we view the problems of our children or spouse or parent as noise. The challenge of the Gospel to care for the poor and the alienated in our society is just so much noiseThe current public debates about war, health care, torture, immigration have become so much noise, not because the issues aren’t important, not because they’re too complex, and not because they are not urgent. They profoundly are all of those. They have become noise because we have failed to listen to one another. We have become so passionate about our particular take on the issues that we cannot hear what the other person is saying. The recent raucous “town hall meetings” are a dramatic symbol of such noise -- the very recipe for conflict.Today Jesus would take us aside and challenge us to "Be opened!" His healing hand would go right to the source of the problem, our own self-interest. Then we would be as "exceedingly astonished” as the followers of Jesus were in the Gospel. The steps in the healing process in the Gospel have parallels for our own healing. First, we must allow Jesus to take us aside. As the poet says, "The world is too much with us." We have to get away from the noise of a culture and a society that distracts us with sounds and images that are becoming overwhelming. We need to get quiet. It is a symptom of an age that is bombarded with so much noise, that we distrust silence. We’re uncomfortable with silence, but we need silence. Silence helps us focus. It helps us move inside ourselves where we are able to listen to the voice of the one who heals. We need the absence of noise. It will allow us to hear the other person.Silence helps us focus on the problem directly -- as messy, as uncomfortable as that might be. If we are deaf to our family members, we must go to the heart of the problem and acknowledge our own consuming self-interest, otherwise we can miss the meaning of the other’s pain. If we are blind to the needs of the poor, we need to confront that blindness and act upon it. If we won’t listen to the other side, there will never be consensus.There may be no more profound example of confronting the noise of one’s self-interest than Mother Teresa of Calcutta who joked that when she would come before the gates of heaven, St. Peter would send her away because there were no slums in heaven. Her vision was so selflessly focused on the most vulnerable in her society and the world that “heaven” was unfamiliar to her. She was not afraid to confront the messiness of the human condition. On the contrary she embraced it because she believed that was where she would find her God. We must learn from Mother Teresa to put our finger on the problem. We listen not just with our ears, but also with our eyes and with our hearts. The GOOD NEWS is that through this Eucharist we can come to the quiet, silence the noise, so we can confront that which keeps us from being fully Christ's body to the world. In this Eucharist we are nourished by the Word and given hope. In this Eucharist we celebrate the power of the Risen Lord to transform our lives and our world. In this Eucharist Christ opens up new possibilities -- opens ears long deaf to hope and prophecy.Today, in this Eucharist, Christ invites us: "Ephphatha!" "Be opened!"