Homily on the 6th Sunday of Pascha/ The Man Born Blind

John 9:1–38 • Acts 16:16–34

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

As we draw near to the close of the holy Paschal season, the Church sets before us today one of the most profound signs recorded in the Holy Gospel: the healing of the man who was born blind. Of all the miracles our Lord wrought during His earthly ministry, this one is unique, for it is written of no man before that one born blind had his sight restored. The very disciples, beholding this man, were perplexed, and asked our Lord: “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). It is a deeply human question. When we behold suffering, we seek a cause, someone to blame, a reason that will restore order to our disordered understanding. But our Lord’s answer shatters every such calculation: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:3). The blindness of this man was not a punishment. It was a preparation. It was a vessel fashioned in darkness, waiting to be filled with light.

Let us ponder the mystery of this man’s condition. He had never seen the sun rise over the hills of Galilee. He had never looked upon the face of his mother. He had sat all his life at the gate, hearing the footsteps of those who passed by, receiving their alms, enduring their pity or their contempt. And yet the Holy Fathers teach us that his outer blindness was an icon of the spiritual blindness of the whole human race since the Fall. For as the Prophet Isaiah declares: “The LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes” (Isa. 29:10). Sin is blindness. It is the darkening of the nous, the closing of the eye of the soul, so that man can no longer perceive God, no longer see himself as he truly is, no longer discern the light of eternity shining through the veil of creation. This man born blind was, therefore, in his very person a parable of mankind — and our Lord’s healing of him is a parable of the whole economy of our salvation.

Mark how our Lord performs this miracle. He does not merely speak a word, as He did when He cleansed the lepers or stilled the storm. He stoops down. He takes the dust of the earth, spits upon it, and makes clay, and anoints the eyes of the blind man therewith. Why this manner? Why this material? The Holy Fathers, and especially the great Saint John Chrysostom, observe that in this act our Lord recapitulates the first creation. For it is written: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). He who in the beginning formed Adam from the clay of the earth now takes that same clay in His hands and forms, as it were, new eyes for fallen man. He is the Creator come into His creation to repair what sin has broken. The very act is a confession of who He is: not a prophet borrowing divine power, not an angel executing a divine command, but the very Logos by whom all things were made, who “in the beginning… created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).

Then our Lord commands the man: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent)” (John 9:7). The Holy Evangelist himself, guided by the Holy Spirit, pauses to interpret the name: Sent. The pool bears the name of the One who sent the man to it. For throughout this Gospel, our Lord speaks of Himself as the One whom the Father hath sent into the world. “I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me” (John 8:42). In washing in the pool of the Sent One, the blind man is baptized, as it were, into the mission of Christ. The Holy Fathers unanimously see in this washing a foreshadowing of Holy Baptism, wherein the eyes of the soul are opened, the blindness of sin is washed away, and man is restored to the image of God. And as the man came back from the pool seeing, so every soul that rises from the baptismal font has been given new eyes — eyes capable of perceiving the Kingdom of Heaven.

The reaction of the world to this miracle is profoundly instructive. Those who had known the man, his neighbors and acquaintances, were divided and confused: “Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he” (John 9:9). The man himself, by contrast, was certain. He knew what had happened to him, and he was not ashamed to say so. He was brought before the Pharisees, those learned guardians of the Law, and they too were divided. When pressed, he bore witness simply and directly: “He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see” (John 9:15). This is the testimony of experience, the testimony of one who has been personally encountered by the living God. No argument of the schools, no citation of tradition, no threat of excommunication could shake it. And the Pharisees, possessing all the religious learning of their age, were utterly unable to refute it. They could only resort to persecution: “And they cast him out” (John 9:34).

Here is the perennial pattern of the world’s reaction to the grace of God. The world cannot bear the testimony of one who has been truly changed. It can tolerate religion as a cultural phenomenon, as a social custom, as a philosophical system — but it cannot endure the witness of a transformed life, because that witness is an implicit condemnation of its own darkness. The Pharisees did not cast out the blind man because he was wrong. They cast him out because he was right. As the Lord Himself declares: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). The man’s opened eyes were a living reproach to those whose eyes, though physically whole, were spiritually shut. He saw; they would not.

And then comes the most beautiful moment in all this narrative: “Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” (John 9:35). Our Lord had heard of his suffering. He sought him out. He found him. This is the Good Shepherd: “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine” (John 10:14). The man had been cast out by the synagogue, rejected by his own people, abandoned for the sake of the truth he had spoken — and Christ came to him in his exile. This is always the way of the Lord. He does not abandon those who suffer for His Name. He meets them in the place of their rejection and brings them into a deeper communion with Himself than they had known before. The man’s answer is the response of a soul now fully opened: “Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him” (John 9:38). From clay to sight, from sight to worship — this is the full arc of salvation.

We hear today also from the Acts of the Holy Apostles the account of the imprisonment of the Apostles Paul and Silas at Philippi (Acts 16:16–34). Like the blind man cast out by the Pharisees, they were seized, beaten, and cast into the innermost prison. But at midnight they prayed and sang praises unto God, and their chains fell off, and the prison doors were opened. The jailer, awakened, was prepared to take his own life in despair, but Paul cried out: “Do thyself no harm: for we are all here” (Acts 16:28). And the jailer came trembling and fell down before them, and asked: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). The answer the Apostles gave is the eternal answer of the Church: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). That night the jailer and all his household were baptized. Another blind man had received his sight. Another man who sat in darkness had been brought into marvellous light, even as the Holy Apostle Peter declares: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (I Pet. 2:9).

Brethren, we who have been baptized into Christ have each received the anointing of the clay and the washing in the pool of the Sent One. We have been given eyes to see what the world cannot see: the invisible Kingdom of God present among us, the Body and Blood of our Lord truly offered upon the Holy Table, the grace of the Holy Spirit moving through the prayers and sacraments of the Church. But let us examine ourselves honestly in the light of this Gospel. Do we use the eyes that God has given us? Do we behold His glory in the Liturgy, or do we stand before the Holy Chalice with eyes glazed and hearts far away? The Psalmist calls us: “O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Ps. 34:8). To see the Lord is good — but it requires that we bring our opened eyes to bear upon His presence, that we not allow the cares and pleasures of this world to close again those eyes which Baptism opened.

And if we find ourselves in the position of the man born blind — cast out, rejected, suffering for the Faith, misunderstood by those who should have been our comforters — let us remember that Christ Himself heard that he had been cast out, and went and found him. Our Lord is not indifferent to our exile. He is not absent from our darkness. He is the One who descended into the very depths of Hades to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10), and He will not abandon those who have confessed His Name. Let us therefore confess Him boldly, as that formerly blind man confessed Him before the Pharisees, and let us be ready to be cast out for His sake, knowing that to be cast out by the world and found by Christ is infinitely greater than to be received by the world and cast out by Him.

As we approach the closing days of this Paschal season, let us carry with us the great gift of this Sunday: the knowledge that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, and that this Light no darkness can overcome. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:4–5). The darkness of sin, of heresy, of death itself — none of it could extinguish the Light that shone forth from the empty tomb on the morning of the Resurrection. And that same Light, which opened the eyes of a man born blind on the road to Jerusalem, still shines in our midst, calling us from darkness into His marvelous light. Let us open the eyes of our hearts, and behold Him.

Christ is Risen!