5th Sunday After Pascha
May 25, 2014
(John 9: 1-38)
“Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”
It doesn’t work this way. We sin, we don’t sin; who’s to blame, who’s not to blame and each of us is what we are. It only matters that the Lord, who is Light, the Physician, is present and is able to heal and illumine our souls so that we can feel and live the reality of our salvation. You’re not able to comprehend, nor express, this reality, since you’ve never experienced what release means, never experienced healing from sin. You’ve never experienced what it means for God to illumine you, for the darkness within you to flee as the light of God enters.
But people today are complicated, multi-faceted, confused, and in one way or another, their souls are layered: layer upon layer of blindness, layer upon layer of callousness, layer upon layer of pride. For this reason they are never healed once and for all. As soon as you take a humble attitude, though, Grace intervenes and works a miracle: you are freed. But the work does not end here. This Grace, this light, this healing that comes proceeds also to the next layer further down. And here the sin is more unyielding, is more strongly rooted, the resistance is uncompromising. If you say, “May it be blessed, My God. I will look even deeper and I will acknowledge my stubbornness and my sin, and will humble myself”, then another miracle takes place. And in some incomprehensible way, the second and the third, the fourth and the fifth layers of the soul are put right. But some people will not accept this. They remain at the superficial layers, and spend their life like this and are never healed.
Transcribed talks by Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos
From: Holy Hesychasterion “The Nativity of Theotokos” Publications.
Translated: by Fr. Matthew Penney
Sunday of the Blind Man
