On the last couple
of Sundays, our gospel readings have reminded us what not to do if we want to prepare
to welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity. The rich fool was so focused on money and
possessions that he completely neglected the state of his soul. The rich young ruler walked away in sadness when
it became clear that he loved his wealth more than God and neighbor. The weeks before Christmas are the most commercialized
time of the year when we are all bombarded with messages that the good life is primarily
about having a lot of money and being able to buy whatever we want. Since the Lord warned so clearly of the folly
of giving our hearts to the false god of riches, it is sadly ironic that the
celebration of His Nativity so often occurs in ways that contradict the blessedness
of His Kingdom.
In contrast, today’s
gospel reading gives us a model of how to receive the Lord for our
healing. The blind beggar was the complete
opposite of the rich, powerful, and popular people of any time and place. He had to sit by the side of the road and beg;
there was no realistic hope that the course of his life would ever change. He surely had no illusions about his circumstances,
for he was defined in that setting by his disability. But when told that the Savior was passing by,
the poor man grasped at his one chance for healing and a new life. That is why He refused to stop calling out
loudly for Christ’s help even when others criticized him, saying “Jesus, Son of
David, have mercy on me!” The more they
criticized him, the louder he shouted.
He did not care what others thought of him in that moment, but was
determined to do all he could to receive the Lord’s mercy. After Christ restored his sight, the man
followed Him and gave thanks to God.
One of the reasons
that we need these weeks of the Nativity Fast in preparation for Christmas is
that, unlike the blind beggar, we often lack a sense of urgency about presenting
our darkened souls to Christ for healing. We have learned to ignore our
spiritual blindness by distracting ourselves in the vain effort to find
fulfillment by abusing God’s blessings to gratify our self-centered
desires. Since we are not literally
blind and destitute, it is much easier for us to ignore our true state than it
was for him. In our affluent society, we do not have to be rich in order to wrap
ourselves in a warm blanket of creature comforts as we indulge in food, drink,
and other pleasures to distract ourselves from seeing clearly where we stand
before the Lord and in relation to our neighbors. We are often so much in the dark that we feel
no sense of urgency to call out to Christ from the depths of our hearts for His
healing mercy.
That is why we
must follow St. Paul’s guidance to the Ephesians to “walk as children of
light—for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Instead of remaining comfortable with “the
unfruitful works of darkness” in our lives, we must “expose them” to the light of
Christ, for “when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for
anything that becomes visible is light.” If we remain in the dark, we will never learn to see ourselves, or anyone or anything else, clearly. Instead,
we will see everything in terms of our passions, which means that we will place
gratifying our desires before both serving God’s gracious purposes for us and meeting
the needs of others. St. Paul’s warning to
the Ephesians against drunkenness applies also to anything that would blind us
to the great spiritual urgency of being “filled with the Spirit, addressing one
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to
the Lord with all your heart.”
It should be
obvious that we all routinely fail to treat and speak to our neighbors as the
living icons of God that they are. We have
all welcomed thoughts and desires into our hearts that obscure the light of
Christ and lead us to stumble in the darkness. Our spiritual vision becomes less focused every
time that we do so as we fall prey to our familiar temptations. Especially during the Nativity Fast as we
prepare to welcome the Savior at Christmas, we all need to hear the phrase from
the ancient baptismal hymn that St. Paul cites: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise
from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.”
The blind beggar
shows us how to open the eyes of our darkened souls to the light of
Christ. The man “cried, ‘Jesus, Son of
David, have mercy on me!’ And those who
were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he cried out all the
more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’”
He provides us with the basis of the Jesus Prayer, the heartfelt plea
for healing, help, strength, and restoration that we should use often. Others told him to be quiet, but this fellow
called out to the Lord with even greater intensity. When
we pray the Jesus Prayer or otherwise cry out to the Lord from the depths of
our hearts, we will very likely be tempted strongly to think about or do something
else. There is much within us all that would
rather embrace some distraction that will enable us to stay in the dark and
gratify our passions. When that happens,
we must pray with even greater intensity and humility as we lift up our
conflicted and compromised hearts to the Lord.
Christ asked the blind
beggar, ‘”What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me receive my
sight.” And Jesus said to him, ‘Receive
your sight; your faith has made you well.”’
We must open our darkened souls to the brilliant light of the Savior in
order to gain our sight, in order to know the Lord from the depths of our hearts
as we share more fully in His blessed eternal life. We are preparing to receive Christ more fully
into our lives at His Nativity, and what better way is there to do that than to
be present to Him with our minds in our hearts as we call for His mercy? Fasting and almsgiving will strengthen our
prayers in this regard. Struggling with both disciplines will reveal
our weakness before our passions and should fuel our humility and sense of
urgent need for the Lord’s healing. They
are also practices that help to purify the desires of our hearts and direct
them toward fulfillment in God. They
teach us that we actually can live without gratifying every self-centered
desire. The less focused we are on catering to our taste buds and stomachs, the
more resources we should have to share with those in need. Growing in selfless compassion for our
neighbors is an essential dimension of being illumined with the light of
Christ.
As we prepare to
celebrate the birth of the God-Man at Christmas, we must be distracted neither
by obsession with earthly cares nor by an unhealthy focus on the darkness that
remains within us. As St. Porphyrios taught, “Don’t occupy yourself
with rooting out evil. Christ does not
wish us to occupy ourselves with the passions, but with the opposite. Channel the water, that is, all the strength
of your soul to the flowers and you will enjoy their beauty, their fragrance
and their freshness. You won’t become
saints by hounding after evil. Ignore
evil. Look towards Christ and He will save
you.”[1] In the remaining weeks of the Nativity Fast,
let us look toward Christ with the urgent expectation of that blind beggar who
let nothing stop him from persistently calling for mercy from the depths of his
heart. If we do so, then we will have
the eyes to behold the glorious light of the Lord when He is born for our
salvation.
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