| Photo: Anatoly Zabolotsky/Expo.Pravoslavie.Ru Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 18:35-43 As we continue to prepare to welcome the Savior at His birth at Christmas, our gospel and epistle readings remind us of the proper attitude that we must cultivate during these weeks of intensified prayer, fasting, and generosity. Since so much in our culture distorts this season into a celebration of materialism and self-centered indulgence, we must remain focused on pursuing a very different path that leads to a Kingdom that is not of this world. In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus Christ restored the sight of the blind beggar identified as Bartimaeus in Mark 10: 46-52. He persistently called out for mercy as the Savior passed by, even though others told him to be quiet. Because of his bold and persistent faith, Christ restored his ability to see. Think for a moment of the humility and weakness of a blind beggar in that time and place. He was completely dependent upon the generosity and good will of others. He knew quite well what it meant to live in darkness without realistic hope for a better life. When Christ passed by, however, he took what little chance he had by calling out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” despite strong criticism from others. Bartimaeus took a risk in doing so, for he might have alienated the very neighbors upon whom he was dependent. He certainly drew attention to himself and his need for healing, when the safe and easy thing would have been to remain silent. He was not afraid to cause a scene because he so desperately wanted to be able to see. Bartimaeus used a Jewish term for the Messiah, Son of David, when he called out for Christ’s mercy. He likely viewed the Savior as a righteous person blessed by God to perform miraculous healings. Like the rest of Christ’s followers, he surely lacked a full understanding of what it meant for Him to be the Son of God. Nonetheless, the Savior had mercy on him and restored his sight. During this season of Advent, we must all learn to see ourselves in this persistent blind beggar. He did not relate to Christ as someone who had solved, or even could solve, all his problems by himself. He did not approach Him as someone who thought he had earned or deserved anything. He did not present himself as a member of a privileged group who expected to get his own way. Instead, he honestly called out for the Lord’s mercy simply as he was: a blind and poor man completely dependent upon the generosity of others. |
| The reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (18:35-43) Sometimes the blind help us to see more clearly. In the case of today’s gospel reading, a blind man opens our eyes to the beauty of faith, even “blind” faith! He is physically unable to see, but through his faith in God he had 20/20 vision! As he is sitting along the side of the road, begging, as he had probably done for many days, possibly many years of his life, he hears a commotion. Most likely this was a very rare occurrence and for this reason, he is quick to ask those who are nearby about the commotion. The people answered that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. That’s it. That’s all they said. But that was enough. It means that the fame of Jesus had spread in that area. People knew of Jesus by name. They had heard the stories and witnessed the miracles and this had spread to all the people even the beggars by the side of the road. Even now, it is very difficult to go anywhere in the world without someone knowing of Jesus by name. Go to any college campus and most of the educated young minds will know the name of Jesus, but many won’t know much more than that. Of course not all people respond in the same way to the name of Jesus Christ. Some have created theories about Jesus: “He was a great teacher”, “He was a moral philosopher”, “He was a revolutionary and possibly a marxist”! Others claim that He was a myth, or that His true life story was corrupted by the Roman Catholic Church. But this type of thinking shows that many are almost blind, even when they can see. Sometimes this is called cognitive dissonance, the refusal to change our way of thinking despite all of the evidence to the contrary. The reason why most people are blind and “in the dark” about Jesus is that they ultimately refuse the only historical documents that tell us in detail about His life and teachings. Those documents are the four holy gospels that have been handed down to us. They are the primary sources regarding Jesus of Nazareth. There is no other “historical Christ”. Without the gospels, we are left blind. But with the gospels, we have the basis to fill in the gaps and understand the story of God’s work in creation and His love for mankind. |
| Скачать epub pdf Sunday Of The Man Born Blind 14 May 1972 In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. At the end of today’s reading, words stand that we pass by very often. The blind man says to Christ, ‘And who is the Son of God?’, and Christ answers, ‘You have seen Him and He is speaking to you’. For us, the first words are so natural, the first event of our life, the first event of a meeting is that we see a person, but what was this wonder of this man who had never seen anything in the world and who, touched by the life-giving hand of Christ, of a sudden saw! And the first person he saw, was his Lord and his God, Christ, the Son of Man. I remember a Rumanian writer telling us in his biography what definitive, what profound impression made the face of the first man he remembers.. He remembered himself as a child, and over him – the inexpressibly beautiful face of his grandfather who was a priest, looking at him, with all human love, with all the tenderness and all the depth of a human gaze. And he says that this was a first vision for him in the icon which a human face can be when it is lit from inside by love and by understanding, by depth and by eternity, a vision of God. Here, this man saw God in the features of Him Who was God and Who had become the Son of Man. I would like to attract your attention also to something different. On another occasion we read the story of a paralytic healed by Christ; and the Church, singing the praises of God on that occasion, says, ‘As this man found no one to show mercy on him, the Son of Mary, God Himself, stooped down and met his need’. Because this man had not found another man to show mercy, to show compassion, to show concern, God had come down to him. Now we live in another time, we live in the time with God truly having become man (is) in our midst, and more than this: He has made us to be living members of His body, an incarnate, concrete presence of His Incarnation, the temples of the Spirit, the place of the Presence. Now any man who is in need, should at the same time find in each of us a man stirred to compassion, taught mercy and understanding by God become Man, and at the same time, simultaneously, meeting with us, he should be able to see the love of God in our eyes and to perceive the active, imaginative, creative action of divine charity in our words and in our deeds. |
| Children with Special Needs and the Orthodox Christian Family The initial response of parents and the broader community to a child with birth defects is guilt and embarrassment. Unthinkingly, we ask the question which the disciples asked of Jesus: who sinned – this man or his parents? We immediately seek to place the blame somewhere. We feel that this is too terrible a tragedy for someone not to be responsible. But to this question and to all questions like it, must be given Jesus’ answer – no one sinned, neither the child nor its parents. No one is “responsible.” Source: Sain Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church As he went along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?” Jesus answered: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” John 9:1-3 Children with special needs – children like the man born blind in this story; children suffering from Cooley’s Anemia; Down’s Syndrome children; children with Cerebral Palsy or other central nervous system deficiencies; children with Muscular Dystrophy; children who are ravaged by any one of virtually hundreds of birth defects and diseases: children with special needs are a challenge for us to take part in the “works of God” that are displayed in each one. We must learn the discipline of silence until a compassionate Christian response is possible in our part. There is perhaps no event more devastating to a family than a child born with a birth defect. There is no more severe test of a family’s resiliency than the discovery that a child is slowly dying of an incurable disease. Each child and every family is unique, bringing his own life story into the tragedy which each must confront. What is offered here are some broad outlines, a few insights taken from experience and an expression of concern for these children and their families. The initial response of parents and the broader community to a child with birth defects is guilt and embarrassment. Unthinkingly, we ask the question which the disciples asked of Jesus: who sinned – this man or his parents? We immediately seek to place the blame somewhere. We feel that this is too terrible a tragedy for someone not to be responsible. But to this question and to all questions like it, must be given Jesus’ answer – no one sinned, neither the child nor its parents. No one is “responsible.” No mortal can or should take the blame for a child suffering from one of many possible defects. |
| Скачать epub pdf Man Blind from Birth 4 June 1989 In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We heard today the story of the man born blind. We do not know from experience what physical blindness is; but we can imagine how this man was walled in himself, how all the world around him existed only as a distant sound, something he could not picture, imagine; he was a prisoner within his own body. He could live by imaginations, he could invent a world around himself; he could by touch and by hearing approximate what really was around him; but the total, full reality could only escape him. We are not physically blind; but how many of us are locked in themselves! Who of us can say that he is so open that he can perceive all the world in its width, but also in its depth? We meet people, and we see them with our eyes; but how (often (?) seldom it happens that beyond the outer shape, features, clothes, – how often does it happen that we see something of the depth of the person? How seldom it is that we look into a person's eyes and go deep in understanding! We are surrounded by people, and every person unique to God; but are people unique to us? Are not people that surround us just ‘people’, who have names, surnames, nicknames, whom we can recognise by their outer looks but whom we do not know at any depth... This is our condition; we a r e blind, we are deaf, we are insensitive to the outer world; and yet, we are called to read meanings. When we meet a person, we should approach this person as a mystery, that is a something which we can discover only by a deep communion, by entering into a relationship, perhaps silent, perhaps in words, but s o deep that we can know one another not quite as God knows us, but in the light of God that enlightens all and each of us. And more than this: we can do, each within his own power, within his own gifts, what Christ did: He opened the eyes of this man. What did this man see? The first thing he saw was the face of the Incarnate Son of God; in other words, he saw love incarnate; when his eyes met the eyes of Christ, he met God’s compassion, God’s tenderness, God’s earnest concern and understanding. In the same way could so many people begin to see, if by meeting us they meet people in whose eyes, on whose face they could see the shining of earnest, sober love; of a love that is not sentimental but is seeing, a love that can see and understand. And then, how much could we be to people around us a revelation of all the meanings that this world (holds (?) and contains; through art, through beauty, through science, through all the means by which beauty is perceived and proclaimed among human beings. |
| There’s an old, old story about several blind men describing an elephant. Because the elephant is quite large, each man forms his opinion by touching only a small part of the beast. So the man feeling the leg says the elephant is like a tree. The one tugging the tail says it’s like a snake, and so on. Each man comes to a different, incomplete conclusion based on his limited experience. That story comes to mind as I think about the increasing number of people who claim to be Christians yet demote, denigrate, or distance themselves from the Church. And many of us do. Me and Jesus Most Americans have a very low opinion of local Church authority. Fewer than half of us place much confidence in Churches or ministers. We say we go to church when we don’t, and more than half figure worshipping alone is just as good. The upshot is that many Christians are fine with God but think little of the Church. We elevate private experience of Christ over a shared experience among fellow believers. It reminds me of Tom T. Hall’s song, “Me and Jesus”: Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going Me and Jesus, we got it all worked out Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going We don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about Tellingly, my first introduction to “Me and Jesus” was on a Jesus People record. I remember liking the song, but I didn’t buy the line. And Christians who do are missing out. More hands on the elephant Jesus doesn’t come by Himself. Christ comes with a posse: Mary and the apostles and the martyrs and you and me and all the other saints—past, present, and future. We don’t get Jesus to ourselves, and we shouldn’t want Him by ourselves. Jesus is best known—really only known—in community. Why? Go back to the elephant. God is infinite. We cannot comprehend Him and can hardly appreciate the little bit revealed to us. We’re like the blind men, each with our part of the pachyderm. What the blind men need is not a smaller elephant of which they can get a better individual hold. They need more blind men to tell them about their part of the elephant. And that’s one thing the Church accomplishes. |
| Christ Healing the Blind. El Greco, 1567 I suppose I cannot be the only pastor who has often been asked by his parishioners what the unforgivable sin is that Christ mentioned in the Gospel. Admittedly it can sound a bit alarming, especially to tender consciences. Christ said that “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven” (Matthew 12:31) and naturally given the terrifying eternal consequences, devout Christians want to know what the sin is so that they can avoid it. Some are afraid that they may have committed it, and are appropriately distressed. So, what is this terrible sin for which there can be no forgiveness, either in this age or in the age to come? To understand Christian ideas of sin and forgiveness it is important to locate these concepts in the Judaism of the first century. Sin against God brought guilt, and with it, divine judgment. Accordingly sin was often thought to underlie catastrophe, so that if a person experienced the catastrophe of being born blind, for example, it was assumed that someone’s sin must caused it. Hence the disciples’ question upon seeing a man born blind: “Who sinned—this man or his parents, that he was born blind? (John 9:2). Or when the tower of Siloam fell upon eighteen men and killed them, it was popularly assumed that those upon whom this catastrophe fell must have been worse sinners than others for them to have endured such a fate (Luke 13:4). Sometimes sin and judgment were indeed intertwined, so that Christ said to the paralytic whom He had healed that he must “sin no more, that nothing worse befall you” (Jn. 5:14), but such intertwining of cause and effect could not be assumed every time. Life is filled with mysteries beyond our comprehension, and divine cause and effect is one of them. Nonetheless, because sin and judgment were often thought to go together, the devout were careful to repent of their sins and pray for God’s forgiveness. One received such forgiveness through the offering of sacrifices in the Temple, and through the giving alms to the poor, and through praying long and fervently for pardon. But assurance of forgiveness could not be assumed in advance. One did one’s best, and hoped that God would be merciful, but there were no guarantees. And God sometimes went on record as saying that He would never forgive a sin, no matter what. Take for example the sinful negligence of Eli the high priest, who refused to restrain his sons as they abused their priestly office: God said, “I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever” (1 Samuel 3:14). Ouch. Like I said: no guarantees. |
| Just Passing Through My blindness never ceases to amaze me. They brought a man to Jesus who was born blind. You don’t have to read many of the Fathers until you realize that this blindness can represent many different things. If nothing else, it suggests that all of us are born blind. Here is the simplest diagnosis of the human condition. This is an important fact to consider, because if we find it hard to believe that we are indeed blind, the greater is our darkness. We are born as infants and, though we have great intellectual potential, there is much that we don’t know. If you don’t believe that babies are smart, try to learn a new language. To overcome our infantile condition, we spend a lot of time and money in educating our minds. I don’t mean for this to be just a rhetorical question, but does education overcome our blindness? When we criticize past cultures, we are like the Pharisee who, when looking at the publican, remarked to God that he was glad that he wasn’t like him. We are so glad to be modern folks and we believe that the size of our libraries proves our superiority. To be honest, there are great men and women of philosophy, math, and science who have advanced our knowledge of many things. God bless them. Yet, despite their intelligence, examples abound of how many of these intelligent people wreaked havoc upon the world. Education alone has not overcome our blindness. The proof lies in the very fact that, while we recently witnessed some of the greatest advances in science, we also experienced some of the bloodiest times in human history. Those who would point to the history of the intolerance of religion as the major cause of human conflict lose the argument in the twentieth century. The twenty-first century is not proving to be any better. Believing that we see, we do not understand that we are not taubla rasa – a clean slate upon which truth is written. In fact, we are slaves to the petty truths of our culture and these truths have blinded us and affects all of our endeavours. All of them! Yet we believe that our education is culture-neutral and that, being free from bias – especially the bias of religion – it has opened our eyes and freed us from personal prejudices. We believe that science is pure and cannot be subject to the misrepresentations of cultural bondage. We think our media are unbiased. It is even worse for religion, because here every man and woman is his or her own pope. Believing that we see the Light, we are blind to the fact of how the truth of religion has been distorted by cultural bondage and blindness. |
| Open Your Eyes to the Light of the Kingdom: Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church Source: Eastern Christian Insights There is too much in all of us that prefers the darkness to the light. We are all quite comfortable with some of our sins and passions. We have gotten used to them and may have accepted the lie that we are justified in doing so out of honesty, out of being true to ourselves. I am never out as late at night as I am after the Pascha liturgy and the party that follows. In the midst of that dark night, Pascha is a light shining in the darkness and blindness of this world. Around midnight, one candle is lit, and the priest chants, “Come receive the light from the Light that is never overtaken by night, and glorify Christ Who is risen from the dead.” Then we all light our candles, exit the church, sing His resurrection, and glorify His victory over death as we enter into the beauty of a brightly lit church. The Pascha service is truly a glorious experience. But if we limit the bright light of Pascha to that service or even to a 40-day season, we will have missed the point. For in Christ’s resurrection, our Lord brings light to the entire world. He restores sight to the blind and gives life to the dead. He opens the darkest tomb to the brilliant light of life eternal. The light of His resurrection floods the entire universe. But we must not rest content with general statements about the light of Christ, for we are all to be illumined by Him to the very depths of our hearts and souls. Like the man whom Jesus Christ healed in today’s gospel text, we are all blind from birth: held captive by the corruptions of death, our passions, and the accumulated weight of human sin all around us. We have worshipped the creature, especially ourselves, instead of the Creator. We have looked for fulfillment in the vanity of life: money, power, pleasure, appearances, impressing others, and getting our own way. We find it easy to think only of ourselves and our will, but so hard to live with the humility and selfless love of Christ. We define ourselves over against other people, and build ourselves up by putting them down and harboring resentment. So much of our life has been a wandering in darkness and we may have despaired of things ever getting any better. At times, we may not have the eyes to see any light at all. |
| The Faith that Moves Mountains Source: St. Mary Orthodox Church - Cambridge, MA Archpriest Antony Hughes 23 July 2017 And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed Him, crying, and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us. And when He was come into the house, the blind men came to Him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto Him, Yea, Lord. Then touched He their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it. But they, when they were departed, spread abroad His fame in all that country. As they went out, behold, they brought to Him a dumb man possessed with a devil. And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake: and the multitudes marveled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils. And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people (Matthew 9:27-35). The parables and miracle stories of Jesus are multilayered. We have the event, we have the meaning of the event in context, and then we can move even deeper into psychological and metaphorical meaning. Today’s miracle stories are great examples. I will focus on the two blind men. This is a cut and dry healing, straightforward, with some interesting detail. Particularly this, Jesus tells the blind men, sternly, not to report their healing to anyone. They do. We aren’t sure why he told them that. Perhaps he wanted to reveal himself more slowly and not draw attention to himself too quickly. He wasn’t, after all, interested in PR. But whatever the case, when the word got out the crowds grew as he went from town to city to village proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom and healing. What was that Good News he preached? Was it, “A Great Healer has come and it is Me?” No, that was not it otherwise he would have instructed the young men to go on tv and testify. The Gospel message is not that. It is simple. It is one thing. Jesus taught it in his first sermon in Mark’s Gospel and the message did not change throughout his life. |
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