Everything about our humanity speaks of being open. All our senses open us out to the big world out there, to both people and things. Our spiritual faculties are the same. We stunt our own growth if our minds and hearts are not open. Openness brings risks, of course. When we are open, we are vulnerable. Not everything and everyone out in that big wide world will do us good. In fact, they can do us a lot of harm. So, to protect ourselves and our very ability to be open, we need to discern both things and people, to sieve and suss them out, with care and vigilance. The opposite risk might then happen: that we might close in on ourselves and give up bothering. But that would lead to frustration and dissatisfaction; we would stagnate. What we need is therefore a balancing act: to remain open in principle but to choose carefully what and whom we allow in, and to whom and what we go out of ourselves.
A closed-minded or close-hearted Christian is especially a contradiction in terms. It was because they had such closed minds and hearts that Jesus could make no headway with the Jewish leaders during his public ministry. He was murdered because he didn’t fit into their very narrow and suffocating world. Their minds and hearts had become dark tombs over which large stones had been rolled and would not be moved. Even the Apostles shared in that closed mind and heart-set to some degree, until the risen Lord rolled the stone away for them.
We learn that the disciples of Emmaus were closed in on their worldly expectations of Jesus until He walks with them and opens their minds to understand the Scriptures. They themselves remark that, as He opened their minds, Jesus made their hearts burn within them. He showed how the Scriptures pointed to Himself and in doing so He fanned the beginnings of love they already had for Him into a great flame. In today’s Gospel, once again we hear how Jesus opens the minds, this time, of allthe disciples in the upper room to understand the Scriptures and how these were fulfilled in Him. Their hearts were already on fire with joy at the sight of Him risen from the dead.
In the end, our entire humanity, both in spirit and in body, both individually and collectively, must open out to Christ. It is for Himself that He created us to be open. Only He will satisfy the hunger of our minds for truth, of our hearts for love, of our whole being for life. Being open minded can’t be reduced merely to a restless curiosity for novel ideas or positions. It is rather the persevering search for Christ, the eternal Word and Truth of the Father. Something like science or even theology is only as helpful as it leads us to Christ. The world of nature gives us a general revelation about God, about His attributes of order, beauty and majesty, for example. But the same Jesus who opens our minds to understand the special revelation of God contained in the bible also opens them to understand nature, far more fully than science can do on its own. Science is at the service of Christ since what it discovers is but Christ’s handiwork. What science discovers, Christ has already created. Just as it is contradictory for a Christian to be closed-minded, so it is a contradiction that science would claim to disprove the existence of God or state that God is irrelevant. It has neither reason nor authority to do so. If science considers that it has made God irrelevant, it has become just another tomb over which it has rolled a stone all by itself. So many claims to open-mindedness turn out to be just other forms of closed-mindedness.
It is openness to Christ which gives all human searching and researching its most authentic drive towards fulfilment. It will make the hearts of everyone involved burn within them. Not only that, since Christ has redeemed the whole world, both humanity and the natural world, then the more science, art and all human endeavour are focused on Christ, the more they will improve the life and conditions of human society. To cut Christ or, more generally, God out of the picture is to ensure failure or at least to risk a vastly stunted growth. It’s not that Christ must be the actual material stuff of all our various human endeavours, but rather their inspiration, their framework and their ultimate goal. You might say, their alpha and their omega. For all things exist by Him and in Him and for Him.
And that’s true in the life of each one of us. Christ is, quite simply, our beginning and our end. It only makes sense, then, that between start and finish we live for Him in the way He wants us to live. By His Word we are each created and so, somehow, in His Word, both in Scripture and the created world, He opens our minds to understand the meaning of our own lives. To know the Scriptures is to give the Lord an opening so that He can open us up ever more fully to the truth of Himself, of our own selves, of the cosmos and of history. When St. Augustine was on the cusp of his conversion, he heard the voice of a child say to him, “take and read”, referring to the bible. Augustine devoured it and it opened his mind and heart to Christ and led him to holiness, to an overwhelming love for Jesus and for others. That child still calls out to you and to me: Take and read!
Being open-minded does not mean being empty-headed. We don’t come to the table with nothing in our minds and hearts. On the contrary, as followers of Christ, He fills our hearts and minds and leads us to discover with Christian intelligence and discernment what He desires of us in order to face and engage with the challenges of our time. What is old is of no use unless it is of Christ; what is new is of no use unless it is of Christ. It is not oldness or newness which is decisive, but Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and for ever, ever ancient and ever new. Once, Jesus sat in front of Himself a man who was deaf and dumb, in other words closed. Raising His eyes to heaven, Jesus then gives a sigh coming from the depths of his heart and cries out the word: Ephphatha, be opened! And the man was healed. Today, let’s come before the Lord with whatever in us may be closed or only half-open to Him and hear Him sigh and cry, Ephphatha, be opened. And may we rejoice to see and hear Him in front of us, our risen and beautiful Lord.