Before his encounter with Christ, the man born blind had never seen anything. Everything was dark; he had to guess about everything by touch, by imagination; he had no real, clear vision. And then he met Christ, and the Savior opened his eyes. What was the first thing this man saw? The face of Christ, the gaze of Christ; the face of God who became man, the gaze of divine, profound, compassionate love, fixed upon him, upon him alone out of the entire crowd. He immediately came face to face with the Living God and with that miracle which so amazes us: that God can focus His attention on each one of us, as on a lost sheep, and does not see the crowd, but sees the individual person. Then the blind man probably looked around at everything; and what he had known from stories, from hearsay, became reality: I SEE.
This still happens today; it can happen to each of us. Almost all our lives we live like this man born blind, on handouts. We sit like beggars by the roadside, stretching out our hand in hope that some passerby will notice, if not us, then our hand, and give us something to live on for a few hours. Such handouts we receive from a human glance that rests upon us, from a word addressed to us, from a kind deed done for us. But all this leaves us by the roadside, on the way — blind, beggars, asking for alms.
When Christ passed by another blind man, Bartimaeus, he did not wait for the Savior to approach him and ask him: Do you want to be saved, do you want to see? As soon as in the noisy crowd he sensed something extraordinary and, asking, found out who was passing, he began to cry out for help. True, people tried to stop him, and probably the thought crept in: Is it worth crying out, is it worth calling for help, will the Lord hear, will He respond to such an insignificant need as mine? But he continued to cry out for help, because his suffering was so great, his need so desperate, he was ready to push through the people to be heard by God.
If only we could feel, realize, how blind we are! If only we could realize that not only do we know eternal, divine life mostly from hearsay, but that even earthly life around us is dim and ghostly because we are blind, or because, like another blind man in the Gospel, not immediately healed by Christ, we see things as if in a fog. If only we remembered what the Savior tells us about the beauty, the glory of eternal and earthly life, and did not settle for our blindness — how we would strive to stop Christ, so that He might fix His gaze upon us and address to us His sovereign, healing, life-giving word! Then we could see with our own eyes the astonishing beauty of God’s face, the unfathomable beauty of the divine gaze, resting upon us with mercy, compassion, and tenderness.
It is so easy for us to see, but we see little and not deeply. Let us seek that vision which can only be opened when our heart becomes bright and pure. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And in the radiance of God’s presence, we could see each other, each one of us, illuminated by God’s love, shining with the glory of eternal life. Or perhaps — wounded, darkened, waiting from us not handouts, not charity, but the giving of our whole life out of love for him, so that he might see, so that the Kingdom of God might be opened to him already on earth. Amen.
Митрополит Антоній Сурожський
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