Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man
By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev
“Blinded in the eyes of my soul, I come to You, O Christ, like the man blind from birth, crying to You in repentance: You are the Most Radiant Light of those in darkness.” (Kontakion, Tone 4)
The Holy Church, celebrating the healing of the man blind from birth, assigns to this celebration one of the Sunday days of the most important part of the ecclesiastical year — Holy Pentecost — thereby indicating that the question of spiritual blindness is the fundamental question of our life. For we live in the world created by God, and our life is subject to those laws which the Lord established for the universe created by Him.
But the Lord is not only the Lawgiver of the Universe, but also the Source and Giver of life, because He gives to everything in the world “life, breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25). And He Himself is Life. “In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men” (John 1:4). Therefore, if we wish to know God, then the path to such knowledge is possible for us precisely through life, as through that which was created by God.
We perceive and sense life in everything that surrounds us, but above all in ourselves. Each one of us feels life not only in the external world, but experiences it in his own soul. The most important and unquestionable thing for us is that we ourselves live. In everything else we may doubt, but in what we feel and experience in our inner life we cannot doubt.
However, in this life we may see God, or we may not see Him. Directly perceiving and experiencing life in ourselves, we may fail to see Him Who is the Source of this life, in Whom is “the Life and the Light of men.” Then even while living, we shall not live, and while seeing, we shall not see. The Divine law says that man must attend to himself. “Attend to yourself,” it is said in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament the Lord says this even more clearly: “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Outside one can find support, a foundation, one can find only a likeness of this Kingdom, approaching us to its understanding to one degree or another. Therefore the Lord said in parables that the Kingdom of God is like a seed (Matt. 13:24), like leaven (Matt. 13:33), like treasure hidden in a field; but all these are only likenesses, whereas the Kingdom of God itself is within us. Even the word of God — the Gospel — cannot open to us the path into the Kingdom of God if we do not find it in our own soul. First attend to yourself, and then you may also hear the voice of the word of God.
So also says the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to Timothy: “Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine... for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1 Tim. 4:16). Take heed to yourself first of all; if you do not find the Kingdom of God in yourself, then what need have you of Holy Scripture? If you do not build within yourself the Kingdom of God, then how will you save yourself, and still more, those who hear you? You then are an empty sound for others.
If there is no fire in you yourself, then how can you kindle others? At best you can communicate to them information about that which you yourself have heard, but not bear witness to that by which your soul lives.
The Holy Fathers studied languages, literature, pagan philosophy; they used all this for the interpretation of Holy Scripture, the expounding of the meaning of Christian dogmas, and especially for repelling the attacks of pagans and heretics. But all these were only external, auxiliary means. The chief thing consisted in this, that they “attended to themselves,” within themselves they sought the Kingdom of God, the depths of the Spirit. As it is said in the troparion to Saint Gregory the Theologian: “For having searched out the depths of the Spirit, the beauties of eloquence were added unto you.” The Holy Apostles, and after them the shepherds and teachers of the Church, could only kindle the fire of grace-filled life in human souls because this fire burned within themselves. This was that fire concerning which the Lord said: “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish that it were already kindled” (Luke 12:49).
“Attend to yourself,” thus speaks the Divine Law, but the law of this world says the opposite: “Look outward, and then your life will be good and beautiful.”
When a man goes by the spiritual path, he sees life in himself: life that is genuine, eternal, and not illusory, not a “temporary dream,” not what the speculations of science say concerning life, always relative and imperfect. This genuine life man then begins to value also in others. Loving in ourselves the primordial beauty of the Image of God, we also in others begin to love above all this beauty, while the external only insofar as this primordial beauty receives reflection in it.
Different is the approach to life among the people of this world. They consider that in order for life to be beautiful, it must be directed not inward but outward. In order to receive genuine joy and live a real life, says the world, man must penetrate as much as possible into nature and into the life of people, by means of science uncover the mysteries of the world, create as much as possible of that which in spiritual life is called diversion, that which distracts man from his soul and its hidden inner life.
The thoughts of the God-fighter are directed toward this: by all powers, by all possible means, to distract man from this life and in place of it give a surrogate of life — a captivating and variegated, but sin-created picture of life. Hence it is understandable why we are so much entertained, why everything in our life is directed outward, why it becomes more and more boring for us to remain alone with ourselves.
Spiritual life gives man joy: “Rejoice always in the Lord, and again I say, rejoice” (Phil. 4:4), says the Apostle Paul. Man cannot live without joy. Christ knows this and gives great joy to those who have Him and live with Him. But this is an entirely different joy from that which the world promises us. This quiet joy lives in the hearts of those who labor in the field of the Lord. In order to receive it, one must enter the inner chamber of his soul and begin cultivating the soil of his heart. Then, after labor and struggle, joy will come: after suffering comes resurrection, after labor comes transfiguration. Thus went the Holy Fathers. They went by the path of ascetic struggle, after which followed great joy in the Lord.
If a man in his life goes against God, if his thoughts and desires are turned outward and he does not look into his heart, he also receives joy (because, even while perverting the law according to which we were created, we nevertheless follow it while at least a spark of life smolders in the soul of man) — he rejoices. But because his life is built upon the distortion of the law of God, and he lives in sin, therefore his joy also is stained by sin and is always connected with bitterness.
The Holy Fathers say that every sin carries with it joy. But if for the man living the spiritual life joy comes after labor, then for those who live in sin the greatest joy comes before the commission of the sin; it is connected with the imagining of the sin and attraction toward it. At the moment of committing the sin, the joy becomes dulled, and afterward comes the anguish of satiety and despair. This joy is temporary; it does not remain eternally like that which the Lord gives, and concerning which He said that no one shall take it away from you.
The joy which a man living in God has is the joy of a peaceful heart. It is experienced in stillness, because Christ, Who gives it, is the “Prince of Stillness” — “For you, O Bride of God, have borne the Prince of Stillness — Christ,” it is said in the Canon of Supplication to the Mother of God.
Only in this stillness can we truly see our soul and value it, feel within it the “Beauty created according to the Image of God.”
For even the external world, the nature surrounding us, we can truly understand and comprehend, feel its beauty, not in storm, not in the whirlwind of destruction, but in stillness. True, there is a certain peculiar joy also in the perception of battling elements. There is joy and even intoxication “in the raging ocean, amidst fearful waves and stormy darkness,” but true knowledge of the life of nature we can receive only when it reveals itself in stillness. Then every sound and every rustle will speak of its life and proclaim with voiceless voices its Cause and Creator.
The same is true in our soul: in the tense life of its passions, which to a man alien to spiritual life appears beautiful, but from the spiritual point of view appears as a sinful condition of soul, we shall never know nor see its true nature. The true picture of the life of our soul is revealed only to those who go by the path of stillness and silence.
Thus today the Holy Church celebrates the healing of the man blind from birth. And it seems to us that we also participate in this feast, because we know that the Lord is the True Light, “enlightening every man coming into the world.” But have our souls truly received sight in order to see this Light? What does it mean for a blind man to see light? Some see how the darkness which until now surrounded them, and in which they dwelt, gradually disperses, but they still cannot see the beauty of God's world surrounding them.
The same is true in spiritual life: for many of us the Light of Christ has already shone, but we do not yet have the spiritual sharpness to see Him continually, and in Him to see our soul and the surrounding world. And this sharpness is given through purity of heart. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). It is not enough to have a concept of the Light; one must have spiritual sharpness of sight. The Holy Church calls us today to the sanctification of our souls and the building of our inner house.
Above all, “take heed to yourself,” and only afterward to Holy Scripture, to the Divine Services, to other people, to nature.
If within yourselves you find God, then you will see Him in all His creations.
Therefore the Holy Church also prays today for the granting to us of this spiritual sharpness of sight: “Blinded in the eyes of my soul, I come to You, O Christ, like the man blind from birth, crying to You in repentance: You are the Most Radiant Light of those in darkness.” Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
