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 this season is primarily
about having lots of money to spend on our perfect families and good-looking friends. Since the Lord warned so clearly of the folly
of seeking first anything other than His Kingdom, it is sadly ironic that the
celebration of His Nativity so often occurs in ways that tempt us to the
idolatry of worshiping the good things of this life as ends in themselves.
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 healing mercy. And 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, entertainment,
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.
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. There is no more direct way to
serve Him than by limiting our self-centeredness and self-indulgence in order
to help “the least of these” with whom He identified Himself.
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, we must 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.
We must be
careful, however, to resist the temptation to distort the spiritual disciplines
of this season into legalistic religious requirements that we imagine could
somehow impress or appease God. St. Paul
reminded the Ephesians that such a mindset has nothing at all to do with how we
may share in the life of our Lord, “For by grace you have been saved through
faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of
works, lest any man should boast.” The Lord’s
restoration of sight to the blind beggar conveys clearly that we need something
of a completely different order than even the strictest type of legal or moral
observance. The blind man required nothing
less than unfathomable divine mercy to regain his sight. The Savior’s healing
ministry reveals that He came to restore and fulfill us in holiness as His
living icons, neither to give us what we deserve nor simply to inspire us to better
behavior.
After he received his
sight, the blind man “followed Jesus, glorifying God; and all the people, when
they saw it, gave praise to God.” The same
must be true of us, for as the Apostle taught, “we are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should
walk in them.” We must embrace our identity as those who have been illumined by
Christ in baptism and not fall back into the blind idolatry of serving only
ourselves. Let us do precisely that as we continue to pray, fast, give alms,
and confess and repent of our sins during the Nativity Fast. There is no other way to prepare to welcome
Christ into our lives at His Nativity than to become like that persistent,
humble blind beggar who knew that he needed nothing other than the lovingkindness
of the Lord and who then glorified God in thanks for his healing.
