Instruction for the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost

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

Today’s Gospel account tells us, beloved brothers, of the wondrous healing, by the Savior, of two blind men and of a mute, demon-possessed man, whose tongue a demon had bound. This took place in the vicinity of the city of Capernaum, after the raising from the dead of the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the Jewish synagogue. These two blind men followed after Jesus Christ, crying 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 said to them: do you believe that I am able to do this? They said 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 warned them, saying: see that no one knows it. But when they had departed, they spread the news about Him in all that country» (Mt 9:27-31). The matter is plain: the blind men suddenly received their sight by a single word of the Savior—the Creator of man, Himself the Light and the Giver of light, spoke a word, and the word became deed. He spoke the creative word: let it be—and those who had been blind were now able to see. And He granted so wondrous a gift for the blind men’s faith alone, without any merit on their own part: according to your faith let it be to you. So pleasing to God, in a man, is a single simple, sincere faith in the omnipotence of God! So powerfully does faith work! Such miracles come through faith! Do you and I have faith? If we have it, then we too cannot fail to see, within ourselves, the wondrous works of God, both in our souls and in our bodies: the Lord is with us even now, by His own divine promise: «behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age» (Mt 28:20)—so He said to His disciples before His ascension into heaven; «Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever» (Hebr 13:8). I see the miracles of His mercy and power in myself every day, and I glorify His mercies daily, for they are without number.

Speaking of the blind men of the Gospel, and of their wondrous healing by Jesus Christ for their faith, my thoughts turn to blind men of another kind—namely, to those seized by a blindness of soul, which is far more dangerous and ruinous than blindness of the body. This is, first, the blindness of the half-educated, or of certain people of our own time who have quite over-educated themselves, who do not see, in the all-wise ordering of the world, the finger of God, who made all things and governs all things, and who count it instead a product of chance, as they do themselves; and they make of their own life, as it were, a plaything and a toy, and, when this toy wearies them for some reason, they pitilessly break it—that is, they lay hands upon themselves; or else they make of it a series of crimes against others, and mock at human misfortunes. This blindness is the more ruinous, for themselves and for society, because people of this kind consider themselves sighted, clever, and all but good people, and count everyone else—everyone not of their own faction—as ignorant, base. Reading the daily news of various occurrences, we meet again and again with murders, suicides, drunkenness, debauchery, the most brazen embezzlement of public funds, the burning of towns and villages. Summing up all these occurrences, we draw the necessary conclusion that these people have recoiled 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 for, what will come of all this. O calamitous times! O times of unbelief! O times foretelling the nearness of the dread day of judgment! Guard yourselves, brothers, against this blindness, this unbelief, this self-willed folly. Forgive the expression, but I know no other way to describe people who act so brazenly and so senselessly. Where, in these people, is the light of reason, of conscience? How have they been deprived of the light of faith?

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

Third, blindness of soul is the blindness of the common people, who do not know the most necessary truths of their own faith and the rules of Christian life. But this blindness is more excusable than the one we spoke of before: it is involuntary.

Hold fast, brothers, all the more firmly to your holy faith, to the Church of God, which teaches you everything good, useful, holy, and soul-saving; do not listen to the self-willed fools of today, who have taken the devil for their teacher and strive to corrupt your simple, Christian, Russian understanding. Have the fear of God in your whole life; remember the second, dread coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fearsome judgment of the whole universe, and diligently keep the commandments of God and the duties of your own calling. Learn the faith, and its obligations; be enlightened, be sanctified, amend yourselves, and be saved. The other miracle of which today’s Gospel tells was the casting out of a demon from a mute, demon-possessed man. The Lord cast out the demon, and the mute man began to speak. Glory to Your divine authority, O Christ our God! You command the evil spirits, and they, trembling, carry out Your command, though with the same malice in which they remain unrepentant. O Lord! Cast out from us too the spirit of muteness: for we too are subject to it: when we ought to repent earnestly to You, we become mute and do not know what to say; when we ought to pray earnestly, we are mute again and do not know how to pray, what to ask, for what to give thanks, or how to give thanks; for idle talk about the affairs of this life our tongue moves freely and sometimes speaks without ceasing, but when it comes to divine things, to the salvation of the soul, the tongue falls mute. Where, in society, is it customary to speak of the Godhead, of the salvation of the sinful soul, of eternal life? Almost nowhere. Here we are mute. O Lord! Deliver us from the spirit of muteness, and teach us what to say and what to do that is pleasing to You, our God and Savior. Amen.