On 1 Corinthians 15:1–10 and Mark 7:31–37
(Commemoration of St. Bartholomew the Apostle)
Today’s Epistle and Gospel set before us the mystery of grace—grace that raises, heals, and transforms. St. Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, recounts the Gospel “which also you have received, and wherein you stand” (1 Cor. 15:1). He places at the center the death, burial, and Resurrection of Christ, “according to the Scriptures,” as the heart of the faith. He reminds the Corinthians that their very existence as Christians is founded not on human wisdom but on the victory of the Risen Lord.
Paul, conscious of his own unworthiness, declares: “By the grace of God, I am what I am: and His grace in me hath not been void” (v. 10). This humble recognition of divine favor echoes through the liturgy today. As St. Augustine observes, “When Paul says, ‘I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God with me,’ he shows that both the labor is his, and the fruit of labor is God’s” (Sermon 169). Grace neither annuls human effort nor is it earned by it; rather, grace elevates and perfects the labor of the faithful.
In the Gospel (Mark 7:31–37), Christ heals a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. The Lord takes him aside privately, touches his ears, and says, “Ephpheta”—“Be opened.” Immediately his ears are loosed, and his tongue speaks plainly. This miracle, says St. Bede the Venerable, prefigures the mystery of our Baptism: “The ears of the heart are opened to the preaching of salvation, the tongue of the soul is loosed to praise God” (Homilies on the Gospels I, 23). Just as the deaf man could not help himself, so we, bound by original sin, required the touch of the Divine Physician.
Thus the Epistle and Gospel together present a harmony: the preaching of the Apostles bears fruit only because God first opens hearts and lips. Grace precedes, accompanies, and crowns every good work. St. John Chrysostom remarks, “The apostles preached, but it was God who persuaded; they spoke, but it was God who opened the hearts” (Homily on 1 Corinthians 4).
Today, in commemorating St. Bartholomew the Apostle, we are reminded of the very first preachers of this Gospel. Tradition tells us that Bartholomew carried the saving Name into far lands, even to the ends of the East, and sealed his mission with martyrdom. His apostolic labor was great, but its fruit was born of the same grace St. Paul confessed: “Not I, but the grace of God with me.”
For us, the lesson is clear. Like the deaf man, our ears must be opened daily by Christ, lest we become dull to His Word; like St. Paul and St. Bartholomew, our labors must be sustained by grace, lest they become void. The liturgy of this Sunday, radiant with Paschal faith and Apostolic witness, invites us to humility and confidence: humility, because without grace we are nothing; confidence, because grace never fails those who trust in God.
Let us therefore pray with St. Augustine: “Give what You command, O Lord, and command what You will” (Confessions X, 29). And may we, hearing the word of life with opened ears, proclaim it with loosed tongues, until we too share in the eternal praise of the saints.