Our Blind Men

Homily for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Then Jesus touched their eyes (the two blind men’s) and said: According to your faith, let it be to you. And their eyes were opened (Mt 9:29-30)

Today’s Gospel narrative tells us, beloved brethren, of the miraculous healing by the Savior of two blind men and of a mute demoniac whose tongue the demon had bound. The event took place in the environs of the city of Capernaum, after the raising from the dead of the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue of the Jews. These two blind men followed Jesus Christ «and cried out: Have mercy on us, Jesus, Son of David! And when He had come into the house, the blind men came to Him. And Jesus says to them: Do you believe that I am able to do this? They say to Him: Yes, Lord! Then He touched their eyes, saying: According to your faith, let it be to you. And their eyes were opened; and Jesus sternly charged them, saying: See that no one knows of it. But they, going out, spread abroad His fame throughout all that land»[1]. The matter is clear: the blind men suddenly received their sight at a single word of the Savior; the Creator of man, Himself the Light and the Giver of light, spoke the word, and the word became deed. He spoke the creative word: let it be, and those who had been blind now could see. And He bestowed this wondrous gift for their faith alone, without any merits on their part: according to your faith, let it be to you. How pleasing to God in a person is a single, sincere faith in the omnipotence of God! How powerfully faith acts! Such miracles come about through faith! Do you and I have faith? If we do, then we too cannot fail to see the wondrous works of God within us, both in our souls and in our bodies; the Lord is with us even now, according to His divine promise: See, I am with you all the days until the end of the age[2], He said to His disciples before His ascension into heaven; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever[3]. I see His miracles of mercy and power in me every day, and every day I glorify His mercies, for they are without number.

Speaking of the blind men of the Gospel and of their miraculous healing by Jesus Christ because of their faith, I pass over in my thoughts to blind men of another kind—namely, to those enveloped in spiritual blindness, which is far more dangerous and deadly than bodily blindness. This is, first of all, the blindness of the half-educated, or of certain people of our own time who have been altogether over-educated, who do not see the finger of God in the wise ordering of the world—He who created all things and governs all—but regard it as the product of chance, as they regard themselves as well, and who make of their life a kind of plaything and amusement; and when this plaything bores them for any reason, they mercilessly smash it, that is, they lay violent hands on themselves; or else they make of it a series of crimes against others and take delight in human miseries. This blindness is all the more deadly for them and for society, because people of this sort consider themselves seeing, clever, and scarcely short of good, while all other men—those outside their gang—they count as ignoramuses and scoundrels. Reading each day’s news of various incidents, we come upon them over and over: murders, suicides, drunkenness, debauchery, the most brazen embezzlements of public money, the burning of towns and villages. Tallying up all these happenings, we draw the unavoidable conclusion that these people have turned away from God, from the faith, from the Church of God, that they are blind, wander in darkness, and do not know what they are striving toward, or what will come of it all. O wretched times! O times of unbelief! O times that herald the approach of the dread day of judgment! Guard yourselves, brethren, against this blindness of unbelief, of self-willed caprice. Forgive me for the expression, but I cannot call people who act so brazenly and recklessly anything else. Where in them is the light of reason, of conscience? How have they lost the light of the faith?

Second, the blindness of the soul is the blindness of schism and superstitions.

Third, spiritual blindness is the blindness of the common folk, who do not know the most essential truths of their faith and the rules of the Christian life. But this blindness is more forgivable than that of which we spoke earlier: it is involuntary.

Hold fast, brethren, all the more firmly to your holy faith, to the Church of God, which teaches you everything good, useful, holy, and saving for the soul; do not listen to the present-day tyrants who have the devil as their teacher and strive to corrupt your simple Christian and Russian understanding. Keep the fear of God in your whole manner of life; remember the second dread coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the awe-inspiring judgment of the whole universe, and diligently fulfill God’s commandments and the works of your calling. Learn the faith and the duties it entails; be enlightened, be sanctified, be corrected, and be saved. The other miracle that today’s Gospel recounts was the casting out of a demon from a mute, raving demoniac. The Lord cast out the demon, and the mute man began to speak. Glory to Your divine power, Christ God! You command the evil spirits, and they carry out Your command with trembling, though with their habitual malice, in which they remain unrepentant. Lord! Cast the spirit of muteness out of us as well, for we too are subject to it: when we ought to repent earnestly before You, we fall silent and do not know what to say; when we ought to pray earnestly, we are again mute and do not know how to pray, what to ask for, for what to give thanks, or how to give thanks; for talking about worldly things our tongue moves freely and sometimes speaks without ceasing, but as soon as the matter comes to the divine, to the salvation of the soul, the tongue falls silent. Where is it accepted in society to speak of the Godhead, of the salvation of the sinful soul, of eternal life? Almost nowhere. There we are mute. Lord! Deliver us from the spirit of muteness and teach us what to say and what to do—what is pleasing to You, God our Savior. Amen.