Receiving our Sight

(Luke 18:35-42) (35th Sunday after Pentecost)

“Lord, that I might receive my sight.”

This is the request made by the blind man when our Lord Jesus asked him what the man wanted of Him. It’s not a surprising request: a blind man wants to see. Our Lord grants his request, telling him, “Your faith has saved you.”

We’ve been considering the significance for ourselves of the events of the last month, in which we have celebrated the Nativity and Theophany of our Lord Jesus Christ; and what it means for us that the eternal Son of God joined our humanity to His Divinity by becoming incarnate of the most holy Theotokos; celebrating His birth at the feast of the Nativity, and the revelation that the man, Jesus, is also the Son of God, in the feast of the Theophany. This is not a one-way street. If our Lord has put together His Divinity and our humanity, it is not in Himself alone. As St. Athanasios teaches, “He became as we are, in order that we might become as He is.” We who are made in the image of God, and according to His likeness, found that fulfilling the potential this established for us became impossibly more difficult after our fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. The defect in our nature that came about because of the disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, meant that we could no longer, by ourselves alone, become who we are meant to be. By joining our humanity to His divinity, our Lord Jesus did what Adam was meant to do; and has restored to us the potential to become like Him. We are baptized into His life; and we receive the power to live this life by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, beginning with our chrismation, and energized by our partaking of the Holy Mysteries, and above all in the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The life of the Orthodox Church and faith is designed as well to assist us in making the potential a reality: by prayer, and fasting, by giving alms, and spiritual struggle, we seek to transform who we are into the likeness of Christ in and through ourselves. We have to understand this; for, if we are ignorant, we will have no desire to act to bring about the marvelous and wondrous transformation unto salvation that God seeks to accomplish in and for us.

The blind man wants to see. This is not surprising; it is perfectly natural. But let us not think that his request was strictly that he be given the ability to perceive with his eyes the material world. We must be aware of the deeper spiritual reality that underlies the sensible world around us. “Sensible,” by the way, used here does not mean that the world “makes sense”; or that it is “reasonable” or “prudent.” Rather, it means the world we know by reason of our senses; the world we can see, and hear, and smell, and taste and touch; and can describe in terms of these experiences – in short, the material world.

Our senses are good; our appetites are good; but if we remain blind to the spiritual aspect of our existence, and dwell solely in the material world, we cannot grow into the likeness of Christ. Food is good; but if we do not understand that there is a dimension to food beyond the material, we can never understand the hunger and thirst for righteousness that God alone fills; we will never pursue the spiritual food and drink we need to be happy, complete, and at peace with God and each other and all creation. Great art, whether as a painting, or sculpture, or music, can lift us to God; but if we don’t know God, we won’t be able to see why we are so moved, or how to use this for our benefit and the benefit of others – and not only here, but also in the world to come, in the “life without death” that is our destiny. If we remain blind to the spiritual aspects of our existence, and live only for the sensible, what shall we do when this sensible world ceases to exist?

Today we celebrate the life of our holy and God-bearing father Anthony the Great, the first of the great desert-dwelling ascetics of the Orthodox Church and life. Born into a wealthy family, at the age of twenty he gave his inheritance for the benefit of the poor, and entered into a life of asceticism, leaving the city after a few years to enter the solitude of the desert. He struggled there, living in the presence of God alone, for some twenty years, fasting, praying, in contemplation of God, and enduring the temptations and assaults of the demons. He considered the life of the sensible world to be not worth holding, so that he might enter into and explore the depths of the spiritual realm. He lived as an angel here on earth, and, as do the angels, beheld God.

Not all of us are called to be monastics, or to be ascetics on a par with St. Anthony; but we are all called to take the same path, to go beyond (without necessarily leaving behind) the material realm to live in the spiritual realm. To do this, we have the example of saints such as Father Anthony the Great; and the teachings of the Orthodox Church and faith; and the practices of the Orthodox way of life; and the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters: Let us also pray to our Lord that we might receive our sight. Let us pray that we may see beyond the sensible world, and perceive more clearly the world of the spiritual realm; and, that seeing, we may pursue that spiritual way of life, to the glory of God, and the salvation of our souls.