Jesus Opens Our Eyes

Today Jesus asks the two blind men, “Do you believe I can do this?” (Matt 9:28)

Christ healing the two blind men
Mosaic  in Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy, 6th century

Do what exactly? Heal them of their blindness? Well, yes and no. The blind men do not exactly and directly ask for sight or for healing. Rather, they follow Jesus, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” So Jesus is not only asking them “Do you believe I can heal you?” but also, “Do you believe I can have mercy on you?”

They do believe and, according to their faith, Jesus opens their eyes. This is marvelous and extraordinary just on the face of it, but the more we meditate on this exchange and this miracle, the more profound we realize it is. Scripture is like this – with layers upon layers of revelation from the Holy Spirit to us, his Church.

Maximus the Confessor
mosaic in Nea Moni, 11th century

When Jesus asks the blind men if they believe that he is able to have mercy on them – he is not asking them if, in their opinion, he can do this. His words are stronger than that. He is asking them if they have faith in him. In English, the word “belief” can connote either faith or opinion, which is unfortunate because faith and opinion are almost antonyms. St. Maximus the Confessor rightly teaches that “faith is a true knowledge”[i] – a gift of knowledge of the truth – which is not only an intellectual assent to authentic dogmatic propositions, but also relationship with him who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” – Jesus Christ our Lord (Luke 14:6). To have faith is to know the Lord, who is the truth and love himself – whereas to have an opinion is merely to regard an idea as probable – not certain and not known. So, again, Jesus is not asking these blind men merely what they think of him or who he is in their opinion – he is asking them about their faith – about who they know him to be and they confess their faith that he is the one who can have mercy on them in their blindness.

I ask you, who is it that can open the eyes of the blind and give voice to the dumb? It is the Messiah and the Lord. Because the blind men had faith in this Son of David, as they professed, I believe that they know this too. Though they call him son of David, for that is who he is, they know that they ask for mercy from the Son of God – for that is who he is.

What drove Jesus to ask the two blind men about their faith? Well, first they followed him, crying aloud for mercy. They followed him for quite some time, it would seem, as he walked from the house of a ruler to his own house. This in and of itself is a marvel: though they were blind, they were able to follow Jesus to his house. They could not see him, but yet they went wherever he went. Now, maybe they had help, or maybe they were following him by sound, or maybe they simply knew the way to his house – the Gospel doesn’t say – but regardless, I think it is a good image of faith that, though blind, they could still follow Christ. They could see him, not with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of faith. According to their faith, they could see already.

And all the while as they were following him, they were crying out, “Have mercy on us, son of David!” This kind of prayerful petition ought to seem familiar to us in the Byzantine Church – for here is one of the roots of the Jesus Prayer. I hope you all know the Jesus Prayer and pray it daily:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

We can hear in this, I think, an echo of the blind men’s prayer: “Son of David, have mercy on us.” But it is also similar in the way that they prayed it – crying and saying their prayer while following after Jesus. The words here – κράζοντες καὶ λέγοντες – are present participles which describe continuous, ongoing action. In other words, they did not cry out their prayer only once, but continuously and repeatedly as they followed Jesus. In our hesychast tradition, under the guidance of our spiritual fathers and mothers, we pray the Jesus prayer so frequently that the prayer becomes a part of our very breathing – and of the beating of our hearts – so that we can aspire to pray unceasingly, as Paul teaches us (1 Thess 5:17). Again and again in peace we pray to the Lord for mercy – as did these two blind men before us.

Their way of prayer also evokes to me the uncomfortable parable of the widow and the unjust judge in Luke (18:1-8). Not once does the widow plead for justice, but repeatedly. Not once do the blind men cry out for mercy but they cry aloud continuously.

It seems sometimes like we have to nag the Lord, that we have to bend his ear, or that we have to keep after him. Of course, this is only how it seems to us from our limited human perspective. Repetition, I think, helps to simulate the eternal for us temporal creatures. And it helps us forgetful creatures to remember – in this case – our creator. Anyone memorizing lines for a play or multiplication tables for a math test knows the necessity of repetition for a human mind. If we humans are to remember God, we must often repeat our prayer to him and our calling upon his holy name. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

It is only after the widow has often plead for justice that the judge gives her what is good and right and it is only after the blind men have followed Jesus quite a way calling out for mercy and followed him even into his house that he asks them if they have faith. Only after they have demonstrated faithfulness to some extent are they asked if they have faith. We must be persistent. We must persevere in the faith even when we get no answer to our prayer the first time or the second time or the seventh time we pray. Pray again! Do not lose heart. Keep following after Jesus with a pure heart – not just in the hope of some material reward, mind you, but in the hope of mercy – of healing, eternal life, and union with God.

The physical blindness of these two men has also for us, I believe, a spiritual meaning. We are the blind men – until we through faith receive the grace and mercy of the Lord, for which we must continually cry out. Our vision of all things is darkened until we see them in the light of Christ.

Only in the light of Christ is it possible to see things as they really are.

Only in the light of Christ can we understand the true meaning of the Torah and the prophets.

Only in the light of Christ can we see and love our enemies as images of God.

Only in the light of Christ can we find any meaning in our suffering because without Christ and his cross, all suffering is meaningless. Only in Christ and in his cross can suffering become a means of union with God – because only in Christ and in his cross does the impassible God suffer.

Only in the light of Christ can we see that for us death is but falling asleep in the Lord and that the great dawn of resurrection is coming.

And so, without the light of Christ, we are blind. And, according to our faith, Christ will open our eyes.

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[i] Maximus the Confessor. “Chapters on Knowledge.” Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. 1:9; 130.

On Prayer to Our Father

Mosaic of St. Gregory of Nyssa in Constantinople

All Christians repeat the Lord’s Prayer, taught to do so by Jesus Himself (Matt 6:5-15). Fittingly, then, Gregory of Nyssa devoted five sermons to a reflection on this fundamental prayer of Christianity. Often, regrettably, we repeat the Lord’s Prayer by thoughtless rote, but our repetition need not be meaningless. The prayer teaches us much about prayer itself, especially upon repeated reflection, and Gregory’s text is a useful guide to such reflection. One theme that Gregory particularly focuses on in such is the necessity of virtue and holiness on the part of those who make bold to call God by the familiar name of Father.

In his first sermon, Gregory provides an enlightening exegesis of the Lord’s neologism βατταλογέω in the Gospel according to Matthew (6:7). Gregory claims that Jesus “invented this… word.” Some – for example, the King James Version and the American Standard Version – have problematically translated this word as “use vain repetitions,” which for some might call into question our practice of frequently repeating the very prayer which our Lord then teaches us to pray (Matt 6:9-13). This “strange novelty of a word,” as Gregory calls it, occurs only once in Scripture and consequently those who seek to understand its true meaning require some explanation. Gregory’s ideas about this word are helpful in the contemporary context because so many have encountered its use by Protestant critics of the Catholic and Orthodox custom of prayerful repetition. Repetition, in fact, does have a certain value. “Through frequent repetition,” Gregory writes, “we may be given to understand some of [the prayer’s] hidden meaning.” Repetition, if prayerful, is not vain but an aid to the human spirit seeking to focus on God in the midst of a temporal world filled with distractions, especially the incessant desire for pleasures. Gregory tells us that the Lord is not advising us to avoid repetition, but to avoid indulging “vain desires” by praying for “empty pleasures.”

This is what He means by βατταλογέω, or babbling. One example Gregory gives of this is the prayer of some to God “for the crown in the games.” This, certainly, is an example many can relate to in our own time and place. Our football culture has even named a certain type of play – one particularly unlikely to succeed – the “Hail Mary pass.” Those who pray for such things “babble nonsense,” as Gregory says, and it is this type of babbling, not repetition, that our Lord commands us to avoid in prayer.

This is neither to say that simple pleasures are wrong nor that they do not come from God as blessings but that our prayer, especially as we spiritually mature, should be ever more devoted to the higher purpose of union with God. We would do well to realize, as Gregory points out, that if we have “by Divine Providence… obtained these childish toys” it is only so that they might learn to “offer the Father petitions for the greater and more perfect things… that profit the soul.” We must learn to focus our prayer less on fulfilling our own desires for wealth or high status or other such things and more on becoming true children of God the Father.

Before we can truthfully call God our Father, we must establish similarity to and familiarity with God by virtue and impassibility. This is a central theme of Gregory’s sermons. God is not our Father simply because He has created us, but also because and to the extent that we are like Him. The earth, from which God made us, though created, does not call God its Father. Our Lord’s command to so address God is also an exhortation to be His children – to live as children of so great a Father. “It is physically impossible,” writes Gregory, that “the Holy One [should be the Father] of him whose life is impure.” Kind begets kind. If God is our Father, then we must be like God. On this theme, Gregory even strongly states, “Those who approach God should themselves become gods.”

We cannot approach this paragon of holiness and virtue by our own unaided efforts. We all have need for God’s help. We cannot even pray without Him first assisting us. “We can obtain nothing of the things for which we are anxious,” writes Gregory, referring to the things, including prayer itself, by which our lives give glory to God’s name, “unless the good be accomplished in us by Divine aid.” Therefore, we must pray to become virtuous so that we can become worthy to unite ourselves to God in prayer. Gregory writes, “A man can glorify God in no other way save by his virtue which bears witness that the Divine power is the cause of his goodness.” Only in weakness may a person give glory to God, and we are all weak. Not by our own power do we overcome the sinful passions and our adversary the devil, but only by our free cooperation with the grace of God. “Strong, indeed, is the adversary, formidable, yea, invincible to those bereft of Thy help,” Gregory prays. Yet, those who seek God’s help shall find it.

God is with us and He will purify us if we do not resist His grace. While discussing that part of the Lord’s prayer asking for forgiveness of our debts, Gregory writes, “It seems to me that the Word teaches us through the prayer never to speak too boldly to God as if we had a pure conscience, however far from human sins a man may be.” So, even though we must be holy before we can rightly call God our Father, we learn from the Our Father itself that none are so holy as to be free from the need for forgiveness. Mercifully, Gregory reminds us, “the Father forgives sins, the Son takes away the sins of the world, and the Holy Spirit cleanses from the stains of sin those in whom He dwells.”

Gregory’s thoughts here echo the usual beginning prayers of the Divine Praises. We ask the “Spirit of Truth” to “come and dwell within us” and “cleanse us of all stain.” Paralleling Gregory’s pattern, we invoke the “Most Holy Trinity,” praying, “Lord, cleanse us of our sins; Master, forgive our transgressions; Holy One, come to us and heal our infirmities for your name’s sake.” Importantly, we offer these prayers before we pray the Our Father. Before we can rightly call God our Father, His Son must take away our sins and the Holy Spirit must cleanse us and make us holy. Only the holy are rightly called the children of the Holy One. Only the power of God can make us holy. Therefore, before we pray, we pray. That is, before we call God our Father, we pray Him, through His Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make us His children.

Psalm 135

The Kathismata for today, Friday, include Psalm 135 (or 136, according to Masoretic numbering):

It has occurred to me that its twenty-seven repetitions of the the phrase, "for his mercy endureth for ever" are an excellent example of what Christ did not mean when he condemned "vain repetitions" in prayer (Matthew 6:7).