I had the chance to work with the deaf for 3 years. They were religion teachers who taught in 3 public schools where there were special classes for deaf children. First, they taught me sign-language. Then, when my vocabulary was decent, I helped them teach religion. One of many things that made a lasting impression on me was that our deaf sisters & brothers prefer to be called “deaf,” not “deaf-mute,” & never “deaf-&-dumb,” which they find insulting. Back in my generation, “dumb” was just another word for “deaf,” like “black” was just another word for African-American, & “gay” another word for happy. Today, dumb no longer means mute. It means stupid. So, the deaf don’t want to be called dumb or mute. Because they’re not. The only reason they can’t talk is because they can’t hear their voices. But can the deaf be taught to talk? Absolutely! Many of them already do. In fact, the slogan the Pinoy deaf community goes: “We can do anything but hear.” And it’s true. There are deaf cooks in some airline commissaries, busboys in McDonald’s, mechanics in talyers, & even deaf missionary priests!
In the Philippines, schools for the deaf require at least 1 parent or sibling to learn sign language. Unless the family meets that requirement, they don’t accept the student. For good reason, right? Most often, it’s the mother who learns to sign bec. the father needs to work. Sadly, most Pinoy fathers couldn’t be bothered to learn even the simplest signs at home. I remember asking my deaf friends: “Your father: not sign; why?” They laughed. Then, then one boy answered: (lazy). Lazy. Deaf children feel that their fathers are too lazy to learn sign. “Eh, kinakausap naman siya ng nanay niya,” the fathers usually say. But signing doesn’t just enable you to talk to your deaf child. It enables you to listen. Precisely because not everyone can sign, the deaf have less people in the world to “hear” them.
We who can hear can suffer from deafness, too; psychological deafness, especially. Never mind the political & business worlds where the psychologically deaf thrive in scores. But in religious life & church life, we can actually be psychologically deaf. There seems to be direct proportion between psychological deafness & power, clout, accomplishments, money. Priest, sister, or lay, we’re fair game to psychological deafness if we’re not self-attentive. So accustomed to having our way because we’ve been superior or president for a long time, so effective in pulling in the most benefactors, so triumphant in raising funds—our bandwidth shrinks into to picking up just two signals: (a) the sound of our own voices, & (b) the voices of people who tell us what we want to hear. Never mind the rest. We have a noble excuse, anyway. “I’m doing all this for the church, for your religious order, for our community, for the poor.” When there is push-back, though, esp. from the unheard, the psychologically deaf play the “utang na loob” card: “You owe me. Our parish, community, congregation won’t be where it is right now if not because of my work, myconnections, my money.”
There must be such deep emptiness that psychologically deaf people feel inside but are terrified of admitting. Many times, they’re not listened to very much by people who really know them, like their family, their community, their own children. This is why when we’re highly accomplished but psychologically deaf, we do gain benefactors & patrons, sure! But we lose out on family. We lose true friends. Why don’t they admonish us when we’re psychologically deaf? Because no matter how loud they scream in our faces, they know us only too well. They know we won’t listen anyway. We hate the soundbyte of admonition.
Jesus walked the deaf man away from the crowd to have a one-on-one with him. That way, the first voice the man would hear was his. We need that one-on-one with the Lord. We need him to clear out our deafness & set us free, so we can hear his voice again, way over ours. By the way, God speaks not in some other-worldly voice, but in the voices of good, well-meaning people who can call out the painful truth about us, & still love us. And not just by what they actually say, but also by what they are not saying. It takes grace from God to hear what people are not saying. Hopefully, then, the slogan of the physically deaf in the Philippines does not become ours: “We can do anything but hear.”
Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ
on the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cenacle Retreat House
7 September 2024 (Anticipated Sunday Mass)