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SERMON 52 A Second on a Deaf and Dumb Spirit1 he office of the teacher is to explain what has been read, and to elucidate and point out with clear speech what mystical meanings lay hidden,2 so that an inferior understanding may not wreak havoc on the listener out of the very place from which it should have and could have conferred saving knowledge. And so, today’s reading is a case in point: And in response a member of the crowd said: “Master, I have brought my son who has a deaf and mute spirit” (Mk 9.17). He did not say: “I have brought my deaf and mute son”; but: I have brought my son who has a deaf and mute spirit. Is it that spiritual wickedness is apportioned among the members of the human body, is confined within the human senses, in such a way that it endures our weaknesses and our sufferings? Is it that it is unable to see unless it has our eyes as windows,3 to hear unless it uses the openings of the ears, to speak except by means of the tongue or the mouth? Is it for this reason that it cannot bear the wretched condition of one who is deaf and mute, inasmuch as its rarefied and airy nature has no knowledge of flesh,4 does without bones, and, just like a breeze, as it blows it crosses 202 1. Mk 9.17–25. This sermon was delivered probably in late September, just after Sermon 51. See F. Sottocornola, L’anno liturgico, 77 and 289, and A. Olivar, Los sermones, 169. 2. See Sermon 112.1 (FOTC 17.180) for similar remarks. 3. See Sermon 139.2 regarding the eye as “the window of the soul.” See also Jerome, Letter 64.1.4 (CSEL 54.587–88) and Augustine, Sermon Guelferbytanus 20.1 (=265C) in Miscellanea Agostiniana, ed. G. Morin (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1930), 1:505. 4. For similar references to the rarefied nature of angels and demons, see also Tertullian, Apology 22.5 (FOTC 10.69); Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.14 (FOTC 49.152–54); Augustine, City of God 15.23 (FOTC 14.471); and John Cassian, Conlationes 7.13 (SC 42.257–58). the whole world in a moment of time, it assumes different appearances , changes into various forms, penetrates hearts, uses souls as its plaything, and inspires thoughts that are unholy and very filthy? Nor can anyone figure out where it comes from or where it is going, and so, like a javelin in flight, it pierces innocent minds with a lethal blow with the greatest of ease. It would have been insufficient, if only the father had spoken, when he made his appeal: I have brought my son who has a deaf and mute spirit, if the Lord himself had not cast out the unclean spirit with the following words, with the following rebuke: Deaf and mute spirit, I order you: come out of him! (v.25) But now let us pursue what pertains to the solution to this question. 2. God, who is going to burn the demons to ashes in the everlasting fire,5 who already even now binds them with fetters, distresses them with torments, and harasses them with punishments , is able, as soon as he gives the order, to maim them with every weakness, and however they see, hear, and speak, to render them blind, and to make them deaf and mute, so that they do not speak. But in this situation what is being shown is what the devil did to the human being. The ancient fugitive, when he discovered that the Lord had come to earth, obstructed the ears of the man, bound his tongue, and, having bolted the entryways to human perception , he made and prepared the human heart as his own cave and hideout, thinking that the hearing of the word and the power of the divine name would not come there. At the same time, since he is sly and crafty,6 he believed that he could mislead the father and deceive the other relatives with such a scheme, that they would despair that he who was unable either to hear or to speak would ever be curable; and that they would believe that what was actually of the devil’s doing was merely a matter of human infirmity; they would attribute to the child, they would ascribe to...

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