Physical and Spiritual Blindness
Sunday of the Man Born Blind
Acts of the Holy Apostles 16:16-34; John 9:1-38
A six-year-old daughter came home from school and tells her mother about all the school events that happened during the lessons, what the teacher said, what they did, how the children played during the break.
Mother did not pay much attention to that story. She listened with one ear, but did her work and thought about her troubles.
- Mom, you are not listening to me!
- I'm listening, daughter, you keep talking.
- But, mother, you’re not listening with your eyes!
The little girl was right. Although we perceive sounds and stories with our ears, we perceive the story with sympathy, with gratitude or love, with malice or hatred, or indifference--and this is reflected with the eyes.
Eyes are not only organs of vision. They are a mirror of our soul. One look of the eyes, even without words, can, as people say, "freeze the blood in our veins", and can illuminate our soul, our feelings, can warm us.
The eyes, organs of vision, with which we perceive light and everything created in the world illuminated by light, are the most sensitive organs of our body. If we were faced with a question, a choice: to lose hearing, to lose the ability to speak, then we would likely prefer not to hear, not to speak, rather than not to see - to lose our sight.
The ability to see all the diverse and heterogeneous beauty of this world, and most of all - its people, all similar to us and all different and quite unique - is a great gift from the Creator. At times we do not appreciate this when we have it, yet begin to appreciate it most, when we are losing it ...
Today's gospel story is about how Jesus Christ gifted a man with sight who, prior to this, had never seen before, because he had been born blind.
Undoubtedly, such a person was most grateful to the Lord, the father and mother of the young man, too, were most grateful to Jesus Christ for His kindness to their son. All people of good will could only be grateful to the Lord for showing mercy to the man born blind, who was doomed from birth to live in lifelong darkness.
But there were people who condemned Jesus Christ for that act of mercy. Why? - "because He does not keep the Sabbath" (John 9,16) on Saturday. Jesus Christ performed that miracle, as He performed most of His miracles, on Saturday-- when there were many people about, so that people could see the power and glory of God. In the Old Testament, the Lord set aside the seventh day, Saturday, for people to glorify God the Creator, as well as for people to rest, but later some people in Israel turned that day - Saturday - into a kind of fetish, a day of all kinds of prohibitions. Jesus Christ affirmed that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27).
Saturday was set aside as the seventh day of the Lord out of love for people and for the good of people, so that on every seventh day they would especially unite with their Creator in prayers, and rest from their daily labours. And, all this was established, as already mentioned, out of love and care for humankind.
The one who does not understand the invested love of God for people in the determination of the Lord’s Day and in all the established Commandments of God, perceives them only as strict rules and tries to fulfill them only formally in order to satisfy the strict God, has not understood his God-Creator, because "God is love," as the Lord affirmed through his disciple-apostle John (John 4:8).
Many people did not understand that God is love, that out of His care, out of love for humankind, established all the Commandments of God for the benefit, for the good of people, for people who were blinded by hatred, self-love, pride-- and such people do not know the true God. They only hid themselves behind the formalities of fulfilling the Law, the Commandments of God. They were unable to comprehend the coming of Jesus Christ to earth out of love for mankind, nor His teaching, nor His actions, nor the miracles He performed testifying to His Divinity and showing mercy to people in order to convert them to union with the true God--so that they would all have the opportunity to be saved.
These spiritually blinded people were the Jewish Pharisees and scribes who, instead of rejoicing in the mercy of God revealed through Jesus Christ, accused him of not honouring the Sabbath. Christ opened the eyes of the one born blind, and opened his spiritual eyes, for he "answered: ‘I believe, Lord!' And bowed to Him." (John 9:38) But the Pharisees and scribes, who had healthy, physical eyes, remained spiritually blind. They did not recognize Jesus Christ as Lord; they did not bow down to Him. The Lord said to them: "Having eyes, you do not see, and having ears, you do not hear." (Mark 8:18)
In our time, spiritual blindness is widespread among people of different countries, different nations, different social strata, and among people of different levels of education. There are even more reasons for spiritual blindness now than there were during Jesus Christ's time on earth...
Some people see God everywhere: in every flower, in every leaf, in every creation, in every drop of water, in every clump of earth, in every ray of the sun that illuminates, warms the earth and stirs everything to life.
But there are people who do not see God and nothing of God anywhere, in anything --they are spiritually blind. For them, nature itself, by itself, intelligently created itself, develops itself. It, the selfsame nature, itself created a person who can think and create. Such spiritually blind people do not feel the illogicality of their thinking: how the soulless, irrational can create the living and intelligent; how irrational nature itself has invested in all aspirations and incentives, as well as means, for improvement, for development, reproduction, preservation.
One bird lover (John Burroughs), a great American naturalist, visited the homestead of a neighbour. She knew about his love for birds, and had read his interesting descriptions of the behaviour of birds, which he observed even in his yard.
- How is it that you see so many different birds in your yard, and I don't see any birds in my yard?
- Madam, you will not see birds in your yard until they are in your heart.
And we can say similarly: A person will not see, will not feel God in all creation, until one has God in one’s heart, in one’s thoughts, aspirations, and in one’s senses.
Christ said: "I am the Light of the world." (John 9:5) He enlightens the soul of every person who is not closed from God's light.
May the Lord enlighten each of us with His light, so that our spiritual eyes are opened and we feel and see God everywhere, in all creation, in all natural life processes that take place around us.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.