Excerpts from Sunday of the Blind Man – Homily by Abp. Lazar Puhalo
(See video for the full homily below)
Some people are blind in spirit. They cannot see our Lord Jesus Christ. Or if they see him, they see him as an image of themselves, not of themselves as ones who should become an image of him, but out of the fullness of their own hearts but still spiritually blind…
In a word, Christ closed up the false teaching of ‘original sin’: “This man was not born blind because of his parents’ sin. In fact, he was not born blind because of any sin of his own.
Here also, he healed the false teaching that God punishes people through natural disasters or through the conditions of their lives.
For God never harms his creature, neither in this world nor the world to come.
Do you see how much darkness there was on the people who were supposed to be the custodians of the promise given to Abraham? … not realizing that the whole law of God is comprehended in the love of God and the love of neighbor.
They could no longer see the Light of Jesus Christ but could only see the darkness of law, of rules, of regulations. And they could not perceive mercy, forgiveness, compassion.
They could only perceive the image of their own selves, which they had superimposed between them and God.
They could not see God because they only saw a reflection of their own predilections, their own passions, their own hatreds, their own anger, their own selfness, their own desire for vengeance, their own lust for power.
And even when Christ enthroned himself on the Cross, they could not see the awesome truth that God is meek and lowly of heart and filled only with compassion, even twisting the things that had been revealed before times to make God look like a heavenly terrorist.
Brothers and sisters, hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ,
“I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Go and learn what that means.”
The God who shaped man from the dust of the earth from the beginning is the God who so loved mankind that he came down and endured all the difficulties of our life, to co-suffer with all of our suffering, to endure together with us all the things we have to endure, and to raise us up one by one by opening the eyes of our hearts.
If the eyes of our hearts can be opened … we can see our Lord Jesus Christ, not as a reflection of ourselves—we can see God, not as a reflection of our own passions, our own prejudices, our own hatreds, our own malice—but we can see the loving Father, who sent to find the lost sheep, even at the price of the life and the suffering of his only begotten Son.
Brothers and sisters, when we desire to see God, let us not look in a mirror, for if God is consumed by passions, he cannot be God. If he desires vengeance, if he even desires justice, if consumed by human passions, how is he God? But justice, as St. Isaac tells us, is like a grain of sand cast into the vast sea of God’s mercy.
Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice in the risen Christ. Let us rejoice as we celebrate the Ascension into the heavens where our Lord Jesus Christ takes our redeemed human nature, the body of our humanity into the heavens together with him and sits that humanity at the right hand of the glory of the living God.
We hear the Gospel so often, we hear the Apostles so often and yet we wonder so many times, “What does that actually mean? What is the revelation given to us?” Do we understand it out of the fullness of our own hearts?
If you understand it as heavy, as legalistic, as juridical, as full of judgment and condemnation, then you need to purify your own hearts with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you see a God who would punish mankind for every, even smallest, transgression; if you see a God who needs vengeance, compelled by some immutable law of the universe which God himself has no power over, that he must demand justice, and what kind of justice… but it is not even justice that people are talking about. For is it just to condemn a person for something over which they have no power? Is it just to condemn a person for something they are compelled to do, whether by passions, whether by political structures, whether by thoughtfulness or forgetfulness? How is it just to punish people for these things? That is not justice. That is vindictiveness.
Brothers and sisters, let us lift up our eyes to the heavens and see our Lord Jesus Christ and see the fullness of his divinity, not swallowing up our humanity but raising up our humanity, for he remained God and man that man might become god—that man might share in the divine nature, for he desired that we should be one with him, he desired that we should be his brethren, and he was not ashamed to call us brethren.
If only, brothers and sisters, in all our relations toward other human beings, in all our prayers and all of our worship of God and all of our hymns, and all of our seeing miracles of God, should be consumed in the love and compassion of God, and not fear him but love him, as St Antony the Great say in the scroll of his icon says, “I used to fear him but now I love him.” Because we fear the unknown. When we do not know God, we fear him. When we know God we only have love for him, knowing that he has nothing but love and compassion for us, knowing that he does not seek vengeance, knowing that he does not count the sins of an ancestor upon the children who are born later, knowing that he does not need a substitutionary sacrifice to ease his own lusts and passions. This is not Molech. This is not Baal. This is the living God.
Let us also not demand vengeance and justice of one another, because justice is best expressed in forgiveness.
Today, Apostle Paul is cast into prison, as everyone is in a prison of darkness, as everyone is blind—soul and spirit. Today, Jesus Christ will heal that blindness. Today, he will open the prison and allow his followers out of the prison. He calls upon us to leave our prison, to leave the prison of the bitterness of our own hearts, to leave the prison of our own ignorance, to leave the prison of our own judgments and condemnation of one another. Brothers, let us learn what it means, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.”And from the depths of our hearts, seek to imitate our Lord Jesus Christ through forgiveness and mercy.
Brothers and sisters, if the fullness of our heart seeks darkness sees darkness in God, if the fullness of our hearts sees a God who needs vengeance, who needs the sacrifice of a human being before he can forgive, then our hearts are darkness indeed. Let us see the Light of the Living God who was not averse to come down in humility and meekness, and enthrone himself on the Cross and suffer in so many things to reveal to us the power of his love.
Why was he nailed to the Cross but that we might see with our own eyes the sacrifice that he was willing to make for us; so that we might see with our own eyes the victory over death; so that we might be embraced by his great and powerful co-suffering love, and that our hearts might be lifted out of the darkness of the passions and that we might not ascribe such passions to God.
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