Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Give comfort, fainthearted in mind! Be strong; do not be frightened! Look, our God is repaying judgment, and he will repay! He himself will come and save us! Then blind people’s eyes will be opened, and dumb people’s ears will hear. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the stammerer’s tongue will be clear, because water has broken forth in the desert, and a ravine in a thirsting land. And the waterless place will turn into marshes, and there will be a spring of water in the thirsty land; there birds’ happiness will be a dwelling of reed and marshes. (Isaiah 35:4–7 LXX)

Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him. And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly. Then He commanded them that they should tell no one; but the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” (Mark 7:31–37)

Now what can [those who deny the incarnation] say to this, or how can they dare to face this at all? For the prophecy not only indicated that God is to sojourn here but also announces the signs and the time of his coming. For they connect the blind recovering their sight, and the lame walking, and the deaf hearing, and the tongue of the one who stammers being made plain, with the divine coming which is to take place. Let them say, then, when such signs have come to pass in Israel, or where in Judah anything of the sort has occurred. Naaman, a leper, was cleansed, but no deaf man heard nor lame walked. Elijah raised a dead man; so did Elisha; but none blind from birth regained his sight. For in good truth, to raise a dead man is a great thing, but it is not like the wonder wrought by the Savior. Only, if Scripture has not passed over the case of the leper and of the dead son of the widow, certainly had it come to pass that a lame man also had walked and a blind man recovered his sight, the narrative would not have omitted to mention this also. Since, then, nothing is said in the Scriptures, it is evident that these things had never taken place before. When, then, have they taken place, save when the Word of God himself came in the body? Or when did he come, if not when lame men walked, and those who stammer were made to speak plainly, and deaf men heard, and men blind from birth regained their sight?

Athanasius, On the Incarnation 38

Deafened ears, of sound unconscious, every passage blocked and closed,
At the word of Christ responding, open all the portals wide,
Hear with joy friendly voices and the softly whispered speech.
Every sickness now surrenders, every listlessness departs,
Tongues long bound by chains of silence are unloosed and speak aright,
While the joyful paralytic bears his pallet through the streets.

Prudentius, Hymns 9.64–69