A Word for the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost (8)

Today, beloved brothers and sisters, there was read the Gospel from Matthew, of the Lord Jesus Christ’s healing of two blind men, for their faith and their plea: have mercy on us, Jesus, Son of David! — and of the casting out of a mute demon from a certain man, after which the mute man began to speak—and of the envy and malicious slander of the Jewish Pharisees against Jesus Christ; at the end of the Gospel it speaks of the Lord’s journeying through the cities and villages, preaching the Kingdom of Heaven, and healing every sickness and infirmity among the people.

You have heard, beloved, how, by a single touch of the Lord’s own life-giving right hand upon the eyes of the blind men, and by a single word—let it be—they suddenly received their sight. «He spoke, and it was done,» just as at the creation of the world: the Lord had only to utter the word—let this or that be—let there be light, let there be a firmament, let the waters be gathered together into their places, and let the dry land appear, let the earth bring forth grass and fruit-bearing trees, let there be lights in the firmament of heaven (Gen 1), and so on—and at once everything came to be, at the word of the Lord. I do not exaggerate this comparison in the least; for the same will and the same power were at work here, in this healing, as there, in the creation—the very same Almighty Creator. It is remarkable that, before granting sight to the blind men who asked the Lord’s mercy, He asked them: do you believe that I am able to do this—that is, to grant you sight? Why such a question? In order to grant the blind men not only bodily sight, but, dearer than all else, sight of the soul—to establish in them faith in Him as the true Son of God and God, as the Savior of the world, as the Messiah promised from the beginning, and thereby to make them worthy of eternal life and of seeing God face to face: for «the pure in heart shall see God» (Mt 5:8). The Lord asked them, as it were: do you believe that I am not only the Son of David according to the flesh, but at the same time the true Son of God according to the Godhead, who has come into the world to heal those blind not only in their bodily eyes, but especially in the eyes of their soul—to heal them of sinful blindness, to open the light of the knowledge of God to those who do not know Him, and to teach them to walk, without stumbling, without straying, in the path of the commandments of God? Do you believe that I am the true, eternal Light, the Creator of the heavenly luminaries and of all creatures, who has granted to all living creatures the light of their eyes and all their organs—who preserves all things, and governs all things, and re-creates all things? And when they believed in Him as the almighty Creator and Savior of the world, saying: yes, Lord—that is, no longer saying merely: Son of David, but: Lord, as the Creator of all—then the Lord works the miracle, and, at His word—let it be to you according to your faith—their eyes are instantly opened and become perfectly clear. Wondrous are all the works of the Lord! Wondrous is the healing of the blind men! But still more wondrous, more saving, more majestic is the miracle of the healing of the eyes of our soul, the miracle of the salvation of our souls! Bodily sight, though it is the noblest and most necessary organ of the body, is nevertheless still of the earth, and serves us only for a time; but our soul—this is our spiritual eye («if our eye is clear, our whole body will be full of light» (Mt 6:22))—is eternal, and if it remains in sinful blindness through the time of this life, it will no longer be healed, and will be in the outer darkness forever and ever. What, then, is blindness of the soul? Pride, cunning, hatred, envy, immoderate love of gain, hardness of heart and mercilessness, gluttony, drunkenness, riotousness, foul speech, foul deeds, sloth, idleness, lying, deceit, slander, theft, despondency, despair, and the rest.

So it was that the scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests and others, ailed with blindness of soul during the earthly life of Jesus Christ—who, seeing the miracles of Jesus Christ and hearing His all-wise teaching, did not believe in Him, even blasphemed Him, slandered Him, and finally crucified Him; seeing, they did not see, and hearing, they did not understand, for they had blinded the eyes of their hearts, and heard with difficulty with their ears, and hardened their hearts by their own free will, and were therefore rejected by God for their willful blindness, for their hardening in evil. Even among us, even in our own time, there are many morally blind people—not only among the common folk, among the unlettered, but also among many of the learned; and among these latter, especially, the most evil blindness is rooted—pride, self-conceit and unbelief, freethinking, the justifying of many of their own sins and passions as though required by nature, or by society, by custom, and the rest. And yet all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, are subject to sinful blindness: for who can boast that he has a pure heart? No one; and if it is unclean in all of us, then it is somewhat blind in all of us too, and we must all unceasingly have recourse in prayer to the true Light, Jesus Christ, that He may enlighten our thoughts and the eyes of our hearts with the light of His grace, and help us to see the whole multitude of our sins, which, like dark clouds, cover the eyes of our souls and keep us from seeing what the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God is, and from fulfilling it—sins which instead urge us to do the will of our own flesh and our own thoughts. Enough words for today. Let us strive to take it to heart, in mind and heart, and, above all, in deed and in our own life. Amen.