Romans 15:1-7; Matthew 9:27-35
Have you ever noticed how we often use our ability to see as an image
for our ability to understand? We say
“as you can see” when we mean “as you can understand.” And we say that people
are blind to the truth in order to express that they do not know the
truth. There is a deep connection
between seeing and knowing.
Yesterday we celebrated a great
feast that focuses on human beings actually seeing and knowing God. At our Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor,
He revealed His divine glory to Peter, James, and John. His face shone like the sun and His clothes
became as white as light itself. Moses
and Elijah appeared with Him, until a cloud overshadowed them and the voice of
the Father proclaimed, “This is my Beloved Son with Whom I am well
pleased: Hear Him.” The disciples had understandably fallen to
the ground before this overwhelming revelation, but the Savior told them to
“Rise, and have no fear.” Then they saw
only the Lord Himself. (Matt. 17:1-9)
We may think that the change that
occurred at the Transfiguration was in Christ’s appearance, but it was actually
in the spiritual eyes of the disciples.
The Lord enabled them to behold His unchanging, eternal divine glory to
the extent that they were able in order to prepare them for His Passion, so
that they would know that His suffering was voluntary. For He is truly the Lamb of God Who offered
Himself freely on the cross out of love for the salvation of the world. That is
how He conquered sin and death, bringing corrupt humanity into eternal life
through His glorious resurrection on the third day.
The Transfiguration is not simply an
event that occurred two thousand years ago, but the greatest manifestation of
what it means to unite ourselves with Christ.
For to know Him is not simply to affirm certain ideas or words about
Him, however true they may be. To know
Christ is to experience and encounter Him as the eternal Son of God from the
depths of our souls. It is to see and
know Him for Who He really is as we share in His life by grace. We enter mystically into the Transfiguration
when we are transformed personally by His divine energies and shine with His
holy light.
In today’s gospel lesson, Christ restored the sight of two blind
beggars who had called out to Him as the Jewish Messiah, saying “Have mercy on
us, Son of David.” When these men came to Him, He asked: “Do you believe that I
am able to do this? They said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord.’ Then He touched their eyes,
saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’ And their eyes were
opened.”
This passage has much in common with the Transfiguration, for in both
we read of Christ opening the eyes of the blind. Both concern Jews who lacked full
understanding of Who the Lord is as the Son of God, as they thought of the
Messiah as an especially blessed human being, not as divine. Moses and Elijah represented the Old
Testament law and the prophets, but Christ’s superiority to them was revealed when
the voice of the Father identified Him as His Beloved Son. At the end of the vision, only Christ
remains. He is not simply the Son of
David as a righteous ruler, but “Light of Light, very God of very God,
begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things were
made…”
Both our gospel text and the Transfiguration also concern people who
need healing beyond their own power. In
this regard, the disciples represent us all who have turned away from the deep
personal union with God for which He created us in His image and likeness. Our sins have darkened, distorted, and clouded
the eyes of our souls. Left to our own
devices, we would never behold the glory of God. Spiritually, we all come to Christ like the
blind men, calling out for His mercy to do for us what we cannot do for
ourselves. Those men did not have a full
understanding of Who Christ was, but the Savior did not require that in order
to restore their sight. He asked only if
they believed that He was able to help them.
When they answered “yes,” He said “According to your faith be it done to
you.”
The Lord treated Peter, James, and
John in a similarly generous way. These
disciples did not have a full comprehension of Who Christ was until after His
resurrection. Nonetheless, He mercifully
revealed His divine glory to them. They
had at least enough faith at the time for this vision to be of spiritual
benefit. It was through this experience
that they were prepared to receive the good news of the resurrection and to
proclaim the gospel to the world. In
this sense, we can see that St. Paul bases his call for humble compassion on
the example of Christ: “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of
the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for
his good, to edify him. For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is
written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.’” He
enlightened the disciples at His Transfiguration for the healing of their
souls, which enabled them in turn to enlighten and serve others.
We all suffer from badly distorted
vision in our relationship with God, other people, and even ourselves. Our spiritual vision is weak because we have
become content with darkness and weakness in our souls. Instead of doing all that we can to grow in
the divine likeness in response to our Lord’s mercy, we have preferred to
stumble around in the night of our passions.
Too often, we are the blind leading the blind who together fall into a
pit.
The good news, however, is that
Christ has become one of us in His infinite mercy so that we may become
partakers of the divine nature, so that we participate personally in the
eternal and holy life for which He created us.
If we will call out to Him in humble faith and repentance, He will
restore our spiritual vision as surely as He healed the eyes of the blind. All that they had to do was to ask and to
believe as best they could.
We can be sure that those men were not expressing a casual emotion by
calling out to Him, but instead opening the wretchedness of their lives for
healing with every ounce of their being.
We must do the same thing daily by cultivating a settled habit of prayer
in which we open our hearts and minds to the Lord for healing and strength that
are beyond our own ability. Prayer is
not simply thinking about God, but being fully present to Him. It is true spiritual knowledge of God, not simply
having religious ideas or feelings. As hard as it is to believe, true prayer is
opening the eyes of our souls to the same divine glory beheld by the disciples
at the Transfiguration. It is how we may
become illumined with the gracious divine energies like an iron left in the fire.
Even as we cannot expect a room to be full of light unless we uncover
the windows, we cannot expect the eyes of our souls to be illumined unless we
offer our lives to God in prayer. We all
like to convince ourselves that we have better things to do, but can anyone
really not spend at least a few minutes each day in focused prayer? We can all offer the Jesus Prayer quietly and
meditatively many times during our daily routines: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of
God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Whenever you are tempted not to pray, remember that prayer is how you
open the darkness of your soul to the brilliant light of Christ. It is how, like those blind men, you present yourself
in faith for His healing. Though we do
not yet have the eyes to see it, prayer is how we may behold the radiance of
the only-begotten Son of the Father as truly as did the disciples on Mount
Tabor. Prayer is the most basic practice
of the Christian life, and absolutely necessary if we want to stop wandering
around in the dark. It is how we ourselves
may be transfigured by the mercy of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.
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