In the predominantly Gentile region of the Decapolis east of the Jordan, friends brought Christ a deaf man with a speech impediment, asking that He lay His hands on him. Christ — uniquely in this case — took him aside from the crowd, put His fingers into the man's ears, touched his tongue with His own spittle, looked up to heaven, sighed, and spoke a single word in Aramaic that the Greek text of Mark preserves: 'Ephphatha — Be opened.'
Immediately the man's ears were opened and the bond of his tongue loosed. The Aramaic word Ephphatha has been preserved in the Latin and English baptismal rite for centuries — the priest touching the ears and lips of the newly baptised with the words: 'Be opened, that you may confess the faith you have heard, to the praise and glory of God.'