The Light of Christ as Salvation and Judgment (Sunday of the Blind Man)

THE LIGHT OF CHRIST AS SALVATION AND JUDGMENT
(SUNDAY OF THE BLIND MAN)

By Johannes Karavidopoulos,
Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Unique in the New Testament, as a healing of a blind man from birth, is this one which the Evangelist John narrates to us in the passage 9:1–38. Several other cases of healings of blind men are preserved for us also by the remaining evangelists, not so much because blindness was a disease very widespread in Palestine and in the ancient East more generally, or because the compassion of Jesus toward this kind of sick people was great, but because these miracles prove His messiahship and at the same time constitute signs of a new reality which Christ brings into the world. The prophets of the Old Testament, describing the work of the expected Messiah, mention among its various aspects also the restoring of sight to the blind. Therefore He Who has the authority to restore sight again to the blind is none other than the Messiah.

Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross - The Path of Sacrifice

By Johannes Karavidopoulos,
Professor Emeritus of the New Testament at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

In the middle of the period of Great Lent, our Church, on the Third Sunday of the Fast, presents the Cross of Christ so that the faithful may venerate it and thus continue, strengthened, the spiritual struggle that will bring them to Great Week and Pascha. On this day, the passage with the following words is read that Christ addressed to His disciples as soon as He announced to them His imminent death on the cross:

"Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” And He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God coming with power” (Mark 8:34-9:1).