The healing of the blind man (Luke 18:35-43)

And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way side begging: And hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him, Saying, what wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.

Why does God allow people to be born blind? How can the person born blind deserve to be deprived of his sight if he has not yet committed any sin worthy of punishment? We may be tempted to accuse God of a great injustice especially if this type of ailment affects someone close to us, like a child. But we must remember that temporary physical blindness is but a second of unpleasantness in the potential eternal blessedness of the glory of Communion with God in Heaven. It is just how as tasting a bitter medicine for a moment causes us agony, but heals us of a serious ailment.

Our Lord only allows physical blindness in this fallen world to be a symbol of the spiritual blindness that all mankind possesses to some degree. When our first parents sinned against God they were driven away from the light and suffered the darkness of condemnation.

But as we hear in today’s Gospel reading, our Lord Jesus Christ drew near to the city of Jericho. Jericho is interpreted as ‘moon’, and so we can understand this event to be describing the condescension of our Lord in assuming a human body to recover the light that it had lost, as the moon depicts the weakness of our mortal nature by waning in its monthly changes. As our Lord suffered as a human, humans are raised up to divinity.

As we hear the blind man call out to Christ to have mercy on him, we see that those that went before Christ told the blind man to be quiet. We understand this event to symbolize the spiritually blind longing for the light of truth, but as they cry to the Lord the crowds of bodily desires and the uproar caused by our vices try to silence or prayer to God.

As we pray to God to come and deliver us from darkness and lead us into light, images of our sins come into our hearts and obscure our inner vision, sometimes rising up in our thoughts as images to throw us into confusion in the very act of praying.

We are being instructed to imitate the blind man when such assailments come our way, and to cry out even more fervently to our Lord to have mercy on us since we are weak and unable to fight against the crowds of temptations that remind us of our sins. Even if we are remorseful for our sins, the sorrows of repentance hardly drive away the images of past sins.

Then we hear that our Lord stopped and ordered the blind man to be brought to Him. The two natures of Christ are emphasized here. In our Lords humanity which can be described as changing and moving, our Lord has become close to us and attracted us towards Himself. Once this has occurred, our Lord calls us to Himself as He stands still in His Divinity and gives us His Light that heals us from our blindness.

When Christ called the blind man to Himself, He asked him what he wanted, and the blind man requested only that he would be given his sight. We must imitate him and not ask for deceptive riches or earthly gifts or passing honors, but only for Light.

Then after healing the blind man, our Lord credits the man’s faith in his being healed of his blindness, emphasizing our part in responding to our Lords grace with our free will. He is not ashamed to give all the credit to the blind man although it is in reality only by His great mercy that the blind man even had the opportunity to be healed. Our Lord loves all mankind and desires that all be saved and offers great mercy to all. Only some respond to this call with the desire to receive spiritual sight and that is why our Lord credits those that faithfully beg our Lord for sight for being healed by their faith.

Then the man who was previously blind follows after our Lord. This means nothing else than imitating our Lord who left an example of how to live. “He refused to prosper in this world; he endured reproaches and mockery, he bore up under spitting, scourging, blows, a crown of thorns and a cross. Because we had fallen away from inner joy by our delight in material things, He showed with what bitterness we must return to it.”-Gregory the Great

And as this man was healed by his repentance and perseverance and by imitating Christ, others gave glory to God and also entered into the process of being healed of spiritual blindness. May we continue on our path in seeking God’s Light, healing us of all darkness by our constant prayer to our Lord, His most pure Mother, the Bodiless Hosts, and all the Saints. Then we too may attract others to abandon the darkness and draw close to God and be healed. Amen.

St. John the Forerunner of Christ (Mark 1:1-8)

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey; And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.”

As we prepare to celebrate the Theophany of the Lord, when Jesus Christ was baptized in the Jordan by St. John the Forerunner, we read today of the work of St. John to prepare the Jewish people for the coming of our Lord. These people had been blessed by God to have the prophets that not only gave an example of a holy way of life, but also warned and instructed the Jewish people about God’s commandments and punishments for disobedience.

Sadly, with this great privilege, many did not appreciate it and even began to boast in the privilege of simply being born as sons of Abraham. We as Christians often are tempted to do the same. We sometimes claim all of the blessings of Christians simply because we have been baptized and attend Church, forgetting that to truly benefit from membership in the Church, we must apply what we have been given in our daily lives by constantly growing in humility and love.

As our Lord was preparing to begin his public ministry, He had St. John begin to get the Jewish people ready to accept the teachings of Christ. He was about to teach deeper truths that were only understood in shadows by the Law of Moses, and did not want to scandalize anyone, so he had the greatest follower of the Law begin to baptize in a similar way that Christ would require.

St. John began to teach deeper truths leading to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He leveled the mountains and valleys, making straight paths in the souls of people by teaching the need for humility. Those that exalt themselves will be brought down by God and those that lower themselves before God and man will be rewarded and brought up high by God. It was by thinking too much of ourselves that we fell in the garden of Eden, and only by recognizing our lowliness will we be granted access to it again.

We have all been born into this fallen world, we have all sinned and have exalted ourselves high in our pride. It is needed that we repent of this and confess our sin to God. St. John instructed the Jewish people of this need and promised them that soon the Promised One, the Bridegroom to the faithful would come and actually grant forgiveness of the sins of pride that have kept us from Paradise.

We see that St. John was clothed in camel’s hair and wore a leather girdle of skin around his loins, showing the need to live a life of asceticism in wearing poor, uncomfortable clothes that help us fight against the sins of vanity and of pleasure seeking, and wearing a dead animal about or loins to represent a chaste life of dying to the beastly sexual impulses that create so many injuries to the souls of mankind.

We are told that he only ate locusts and wild honey while living in the wilderness. St. Bede describes the symbolism of these two items by saying that “On account of their short flight, locusts suggest the Jewish nation’s vacillating mind, by which they were borne up and down between the Lord and idols. The wild honey signifies the sweetness of the natural wisdom by which the uncultivated people of foreign countries were refreshed. And when from both peoples the Lord chose those whom he would bring by his teaching into the unity of his body, which is the Church, they were undoubtedly being fed upon locusts and wild honey, because he turned many into his members, both from the one people, who sought heavenly things with a wavering intention, and from the other nation, who knew only the taste of earthly philosophy.”

Next, we are told that St. John did not feel worthy to unloose our Lord’s shoe. St. Bede once again provides a very good explanation of the seemingly odd choice of words. He reminds us of the Jewish tradition of a brother being responsible for marrying a deceased brother’s wife if she had not yet borne a child. The next brother in line was only allowed to forgo this by the ritual of taking off a shoe and handing it to another that would take the widow as wife. So, St. John was indicating that he was not the Messiah and bridegroom by stating that to do so would be to take off the shoe of Christ who was the rightful next of kin to marry the bride. Our Lord being the second Adam rightfully has wedded the Church to Himself to pick up were Adam failed and He has brought forth spiritual children by her, the saints who live in Communion  with the Holy Trinity.

And so, although St. John’s baptism was only in water and our Lord baptizes with the Holy Ghost, it was still needful that he prepare for the outpouring of God’s grace with human effort. The Sacraments of the Church work similarly; we offer to God our human effort and physical forms, in bread, wine, oil, and water, and God only then pours out the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord was teaching us the synergy needed for our salvation.

May we come to Christ’s Church and lower ourselves from our prideful way of life and be leveled. And repenting and confessing our prideful sins, may we bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, so that we may be granted access back to the Tree of Life only offered to those lowly of spirit, and be made communicants of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the Glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages, Amen.