Spiritual Blindness
A sermon for the Sunday of the Blind Man
Today, beloved brothers, there was read the Gospel of John concerning the healing by Jesus Christ of the man blind from birth; you have heard this divine narrative. The Lord, the Light of the world, worked this great miracle thus: He spat upon the ground and made clay of the spittle—that is, a mixture of earth and moisture—and anointed the blind man’s eyes with the clay, saying: Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which means: Sent). He went and washed, and came back able to see.[1] But what is even more, this blind man also received his sight with the eyes of his soul, and not only with his bodily eyes. He came to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior of the world, to the shame of all the wise and understanding among the Jews, who did not believe in the Lord despite the whole multitude of His miracles, which plainly bore witness to His divine omnipotence. This circumstance—that is, the unbelief of the learned and prominent Jews in Jesus Christ as the God-man—gives me occasion to speak briefly with you about blindness of the soul, which is far more perilous and far more worthy of regret, and sometimes even of tears, than bodily blindness. Sight is the noblest member of our corruptible body, and it brings a person the greatest benefit and pleasure, as every one of us knows; to lose one’s sight is to lose hardly less than half of one’s own life: to see the sun no longer, to see no one and nothing—neither oneself, nor others, nor what is around us—to see neither the beauty of the sky and the earth, nor anything that is in the sky and on the earth and on the sea—and this means almost the same as being a dead man. But brothers and sisters: a person endowed by the Creator with a rational soul capable of knowing the truth, which is its life, and who out of pride, willfulness, and obstinacy is unwilling to know that truth, who goes contrary to his own reason and conscience, and contrary to God and men—is he not the most wretched of blind men, wretched by his own free will, wretched through malice, who turns to evil, by his own choice, God’s greatest gift to man—reason and free will, which set him apart from all the irrational animals? Is he not the most ungrateful animal before his Creator, reviling the wondrous gifts He has bestowed upon His rational creatures? Is he not a fool and a madman of his own making, who has himself perverted the wisdom given by God into folly, and who calls good evil—or the good wicked and the wicked good, the sweet bitter and the bitter sweet?
And such were the Pharisees and scribes during the earthly life of Jesus Christ, and the chief priests themselves and the elders of the people of Israel: seeing the miracles of Jesus Christ performed among the people, the most beneficial miracles, hearing His wise and saving teaching, and seeing His life wholly righteous, holy, and exemplary, they ascribed the miracles to the power of demons, perverted the meaning of His words, reviled Him as a fool, as one possessed by a demon, and as a flatterer or deceiver, and finally, as a rebel and evildoer, delivered to a shameful execution the most holy of all holy ones, the Son of God. What dreadful blindness of soul! Is it not worthy of every revulsion, of bitter tears? For a man blind in soul through pride and obstinacy is the most wretched of all, like the sure prey of hell, like a satanic offspring nourished on the pride and malice of his father the devil. And this is precisely the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: when a man, out of pride and stubbornness, refuses to believe the evident truth confirmed by evident miracles. Such a man finds no forgiveness, either in this age or in the age to come[2], not because our sins could ever overcome God’s love for mankind, but because the man himself, in pride, obstinacy, malice, falsehood, and impenitence, perishes.
What, then, gives rise to such blindness in a man? Where does it come from? – From extreme self-love, pride, and self-conceit, from a malicious disposition of the heart, from envy, and from constant satiety and surfeiting. He ate and was satisfied; he grew plump, he grew thick, he grew broad, and abandoned God who made him[3], says Scripture. There are many such willful blind men, sons of perdition, in our own time too, just as there always have been. In our time these willful, or liberal, blind men are produced either by a learning that is free, not in accord with the Gospel mind, teaching that everything in the world came about of itself, through nature, that man, as a child of nature, vanishes at his death, that supposedly there will be no resurrection and no judgment and no other, unending age – or by liberal talk and, in general, by the company and conversation of frivolous, unbelieving people, or by a comfortable, carefree, merry life full of daily lawlessness and vices, in which even the last Christian spark goes out. Blind men hardened in soul are also engendered by embitterment and despair, by disobedience to the authorities that exist, by the frenzied, absurd intention of having one’s own way, of carrying out one’s absurd ideas or plans and designs. Such are today’s anarchists or nihilists, who in their blindness mean to remake society, to turn it topsy-turvy in their own way, imagining that their plans are the very best and will bring the greatest benefit to the people – almost a golden age. The wretches themselves are going straight to hell and do nothing but evil and mischief, yet they dream of some benefit for the people. What good, then, can be expected of them? A tree is known by its fruits, and the nihilists by their hellish deeds. God preserve the Orthodox people from such ringleaders!
Brethren! Flee this blindness and every blindness that is born of sinful passions: self-love, self-conceit and pride, malice, envy, willfulness and stubbornness, drunkenness and intemperance, love of gain, fornication and debauchery, despondency and despair. Amen.