Sunday, July 26, 2020

The miraculous healing of the blind men (Matthew 9:27-35)


            We see in this reading how men of all conditions come to our Lord and how our Lord treats individually each person according to his ailment. There is not a one size fits all remedy to the various diseases and severity of these diseases that our Loving Physician applies to all mankind.

            We see in the case with the blind men that had been instructed in the old Law of Moses and knew Jesus to be the Messiah, Son of David, our Lord helps them to come to a fuller understanding of the deep truths of Theology about Who He really was.

            He asks them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? to teach them about His Divinity. He was bringing them further to the Truth by showing that He had no need to ask God for the miracle to occur, but that He was their Lord that governs the world and all therein.

            Responding correctly to our Lord's instruction, the blind men responded, Yea, Lord. They showed their eagerness to grow in their knowledge of God as true sons of God, hungering and thirsting after God.

            Next our Lord states that it was according to their faith that He was willing to heal their blindness. Our Lord was teaching us that His love toward man has a kind of proportion, depending on the faith of them that are healed.

            He also is teaching us about the synergy necessary for our healing. We are participators in our healing, just like patients that work with their physical therapists.

            This miraculous healing of the blind men can be symbolically interpreted for all mankind that is spiritually blind. As St. Gregory Palamas says, "The Lord's principal reason for coming to earth was not to open men's physical eyes, but the eyes of their souls, which receive their sight through the preaching of the gospel."

            Then next a mute man possessed with a devil is brought to our Lord. Our Lord asks nothing of this man, knowing that in his severely sick state, he was capable of contributing very little. Our Lord Jesus quickly casts out the demon and gives the man speech, enabling him to advance in healing so as to eventually reach full recovery.

            Then we are given the example of the sickest of all men, the Pharisees that rejected our Lord Jesus. They were the ones truly blind in the most serious sense.

            As St. Nikolai Velimirovich says, "The blind saw, and beheld Him; the deaf heard, and listened to Him; the mad came to themselves, and knew Him; the dumb spoke, and confessed Him, but the wise men of this world, with minds clouded by the wisdom of earthlings and hearts ossified by vanity and envy, were unable to see, hear, know or confess the Son of God, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."

            And finally we are told of Christ going into all places, cities and villages, He was not a respecter of class as many of us are. He performed three things everywhere, 1. He taught by interpreting the Old Creation and the Old Law. 2. He preached the gospel of the kingdom, laying the foundations of the New Creation, the Kingdom of God, the Church of the Saints. 3. He healed diseases to give testimony to His teaching and preaching by His miraculous acts.

            May we come to Christ in our infirmities willing to work alongside our Lord for our healing. So that on the last day we may hear from our God about our deliverance from sin and the devil, According to your faith be it unto you!


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