Acts 16:16-34; John 9:1-38
Before the
God-Man’s healing of our corrupt humanity, grave spiritual blindness was the
common lot of the children of the first Adam, who were enslaved to the fear of
death as the wages of sin. When the Lord spat on the ground to make clay for the
man’s eyes in today’s gospel reading, He showed that His healing is an
extension of His incarnation in which He has entered fully into our humanity as
those made from the dust of the earth. The
blind man regained his sight after washing in the pool of Siloam, which is an
image of baptism, which illumines us and restores our spiritual sight. The man did not really know Who the Lord was
when he first encountered Him, thinking that He was merely a prophet. After the restoration of his sight, the
Savior revealed Himself as the Son of God; then the eyes of the man’s soul were
illumined to know Christ in His divine glory. “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And
he worshiped Him.”
In today’s
reading from Acts, there is another man who knew darkness all too well. The Roman jailer was ready to kill himself
when an earthquake opened the doors of the prison and broke the chains of the
prisoners. Knowing that he would be
executed for failing to keep the prison secure, he was about to take his own
life with his sword. He was in the pit
of despair when St. Paul assured him that the prisoners had not escaped. Then “the jailer called for lights and rushed
in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought
them out and said, ‘Men, what must I do to be saved?’’’ Through this
extraordinary experience, the man became aware of his spiritual blindness. The apostles responded, “‘Believe in the Lord
Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’” Then the jailer was baptized along with his
whole family. After washing the apostles’ wounds, the man took them to his home
and served them food. He “rejoiced with
all his household that he had believed in God.”
Like the blind man in the gospel reading, the jailer gained the vision
to know Christ in His divine glory.
To say that these
men were shocked and disoriented would be an understatement. The good news that
“Christ is Risen!” is even more extraordinary than a man blind from birth gaining
his sight or a jailer finding that his prisoners are secure after an
earthquake. The Savior’s resurrection is not simply a religious teaching or
point of history. The blind man had
thought that Christ was a prophet who had worked a great miracle of
healing. The jailer was a pagan Roman
and there is no telling what he knew about the Lord before asking Paul and
Silas what he had to do in order to be saved.
The Lord changed their lives radically and in ways that they could
neither predict nor control. He will do the same for us when the eyes of our
souls become radiant with the brilliant light of His resurrection.
When Christ was
asked whose sin was responsible for the man being born blind, He answered, “It
was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might
be made manifest in him.” Becoming the
self-appointed judges of others, even those who commit the most heinous deeds,
will only darken further our spiritual vision.
The Risen Lord has illumined even the tomb itself, making it an entrance
into eternal life. Our participation by
grace in the joy of His resurrection is not a reward for morality, legality, or
religiosity; it is no more a matter of getting what we deserve than was the
healing of the blind man or the deliverance of the jailer. We stand in need not of greater justice, but
of infinite healing mercy. If we are
truly sharing in the life of Christ, the light of His mercy will shine brightly
through us, providing a sign of hope in our darkened world.
In
order to gain the spiritual clarity to do that, we must mindfully turn away
from all that would keep us in the dark and enslaved to sin and the fear of death. Because the eyes of our souls are not yet
fully transparent to the light of the Lord, our spiritual vision is distorted. We do not yet see or know God, our neighbors,
or ourselves clearly, but in ways that are deeply corrupted by our
passions. That is why we must struggle
to become fully receptive to the brilliant divine energies of our Lord through the
healing found in the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church. As
those who were born spiritually blind and have been illumined through the
washing of baptism and the anointing of chrismation, we must remain vigilant
against the persistent temptation to fall back into the comfortable ways of corruption. There is so much within us that would prefer
to hide in the darkness rather than to be illumined in God. That is why we must pray daily, fast and
confess regularly, serve our neighbors (especially those we find it hard to
love) at every opportunity, and refuse to worship any of the false gods of this
world (especially those we find most appealing).
Note that the
blind man did not respond to Christ’s instructions with questions and
reservations driven by anxiety about the future course of his life. He simply obeyed, washed, saw, and then moved
forward to encounter challenges he could never have anticipated. The jailer, terrified to the point of taking
his own life, simply asked how to be saved once he realized that the captives
had not escaped. Their examples remind
us not to allow anything to distract us from attending to our one essential
calling of opening the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ. The question of the jailer, “Men, what must I
do to be saved?” is not a one-time question with an easy answer, but concerns
the eternal journey of becoming radiant with the divine energies of our Lord as
we become more like Him in holiness. The Savior has conquered death in order to
illumine every dimension of our darkened souls with the light of heavenly
glory. We must offer every aspect of our
existence to Him for healing and transformation, no matter how great the personal
struggles we may face in doing so.
As we conclude
this season of Pascha, we must mindfully resist the constant temptation to live
as those obsessed with the fear of death.
Such fear is at the root of the conventional wisdom that encourages us
to hate and condemn those we perceive as threats to our vain hopes for gaining whatever
we prize most in the world; doing so, of course, inevitably leads to losing our
souls. Above all, we must never distort
the way of Christ into an idolatrous cult that worships at the altar of any earthly
kingdom, faction, or agenda—regardless of what religious, moral, or cultural
label it bears. There is no surer path
to darkening our souls than embracing the spiritual blindness of serving the
false gods of this world, even as we think we are being righteous. The Savior’s kingdom remains not of this world. His Cross alone is “a weapon of peace and a
trophy invincible.”
Our Lord, Who
died as the innocent victim of violence at the hands of corrupt religious and
political leaders, calls us to become living witnesses of His victory over even
Hades and the tomb in the world as we know it. Nothing can keep us from doing so as we become
radiant with holy glory other than our own choice to persist in blindness. As we prepare to bid farewell to the season
of Pascha this year, let us persist in the struggle to enter as fully as
possible into the new day of the Savior’s resurrection as we turn away from
darkness in all its forms and embrace the Light of the world from the depths of
our hearts. Let us live accordingly in a world that so desperately needs the
healing that shines from the empty tomb, for Christ is Risen!
