We find ourselves this Sunday in a kind of liturgical no-man’s land. Last Sunday was the Sunday after Theophany, and a few days ago we liturgically “took leave” of the feast, coming to the end of its post-festal period. Thus we have effectively completed the Christmas-Theophany cycle. Next Sunday we begin the Lenten-Paschal cycle with the first of the preparatory Sundays for Lent. Today, then, we have a little island of ordinary time in between these two great liturgical seasons. So what shall we do with it?
Last Sunday the Gospel told us that the people sitting in darkness have 
seen a great light, and today we have a blind man receiving his sight (Lk. 18:35-43). It seems to me that during the Christmas-Theophany cycle we’ve already worked the light-and-darkness theme fairly thoroughly, so I don’t want merely to rehash that here. I won’t then try to describe the transition from blindness to seeing in terms of moving from darkness to light, though it can, of course, rightly be explained that way. I would rather place this mystery in the context of the movement from unbelief to faith, or, more precisely, from an incomplete or distorted spiritual vision to one that is clear and true.
The result of the purified and clarified vision is faithful discipleship, as we can see from the Gospel story. Once the blind man was healed, he began to follow Jesus and give glory to God. If it weren’t a spiritual as well as a physical healing, the man might simply have gone his own way and started making up for lost time in pursuing the wealth and pleasures he was denied by his former infirmity. I suppose that one could object that the man simply followed Jesus as a sort of instinctual reaction, as a dog might follow someone who was tossing him food. But I think St Luke (and the Holy Spirit who inspired him) would have us see more into this miracle than that.
Since most people aren’t physically blind, and those believers who tend to suffer from spiritual blindness usually aren’t totally blind (since they are in fact believers), we ought to start from the standpoint of seeking healing from a distorted or unclear spiritual vision, because in fact we may not see at all as clearly as we think we do. This tends to make the healing all the more difficult, because if we refuse to admit that we have a problem, we aren’t going to be seeking healing. And if we are not seeking healing, we aren’t going to receive it.
I recently read a series of lectures by the late Malcolm Muggeridge on the theme of “Christ and the Media.” One of his main themes was that the media, especially the visual media, offer us fantasy disguised as reality, whereas Christ gives us only the truth, only the actual reality. Muggeridge often quoted a line from William Blake, who said we are led to believe a lie when we see with, and not through, the eye. To see with the eye is to see as a camera sees, and this is his critique of the media. The camera doesn’t show us reality, but rather a series of images that can be manipulated to present whatever the editors or producers want us to see. There was some famous footage, for example, of Hitler doing a funny little dance when informed that France had fallen to the Nazis. His little “dance,” however, was created by dropping a few frames from a film clip which merely showed him walking.
Muggeridge himself was present at a certain demonstration in New York. He saw many people standing around carrying signs, with police present, but no one was doing anything. He asked why and was told the cameras hadn’t shown up yet. As soon as they did, the protesters began to raise their signs and shout, and the police started roughing them up. When the cameras had filmed enough, the demonstrators and police went home. He said he watched it on the news that night, and it looked very impressive! The point is that even though the camera accurately recorded what was in front of it, it didn’t present reality, only a staged event calculated to produce a certain reaction from the viewers. So, as Jesus said in one of his parables, they see but they do not perceive.
Now seeing through the eye refers to perceiving the significance of what is seen, and not merely looking at it superficially. It is a seeing that leads to true spiritual perception and hence to understanding and wisdom. This is the direction in which our healing of spiritual blindness must take us. Our faith is supposed to be that which gives us the capacity for spiritual perception, a seeing that is more than mere looking. The sight that is faith looks through things and beyond things to the deepest eternal Reality, which is God. But isn’t faith by definition believing in something that we cannot see?
I’d like to share a rather lengthy quote on this point, but this time I’m not merely copying the words of others, because the one I’m quoting is myself! This is taken from my wildly best-selling (a few hundred copies, anyway) book, How Lovely is Your Dwelling Place: Lifting the Veils on the Presence of God. The devout and pious author says this: “When I speak of a vision of reality that is radically Christian, that sees beyond the surface of things to reality as God has made it, I speak of a vision generated by faith and grace, that is, a sharpened spiritual perception. When we Christians say that we see ‘with the eyes of faith,’ we’re not talking about religious imagination, wishful thinking, or seeing something that isn’t objectively there. On the contrary, we need the assistance of the gift of faith and spiritual awareness to perceive what really is there.
“What do I mean by faith? I am coming to the conclusion that ‘blind faith’ is a contradiction in terms, at least when we are talking about faith in God… Faith has to be a kind of vision, a kind of perception. Faith may begin with simply believing in what we cannot see, but that will not endure the long haul… Faith cannot remain at the level of blindly believing the invisible, if it is to come to full maturity.
“There will always be an element of believing without seeing, and the Lord pronounced his blessing upon it (Jn. 20:29). But He was talking about seeing Him with our bodily eyes, not about the spiritual perception that faith is meant to cultivate. To live in faith is not to walk in blindness, but to have the capacity to lift the veils and perceive the presence of God, however dimly. The full awareness of the mysteries of God and of Heaven may be beyond our grasp in this life, but it is just beyond…
“Our human consciousness, our daily awareness of reality, lies waiting, as if dead, for that lightning bolt of faith that will be for it a true resurrection, a true illumination. For our human awareness to be truly alive to all that is, it must be raised up to the level of faith. That is another reason why faith is not a mere believing without seeing. It is an inner resurrection that opens vistas to us that would be impossible to perceive without it. We see with new eyes, for our moribund consciousness has been resurrected by the gift of faith.”
Later in the book I go on to say that one of the essential elements for that true spiritual perception which is faith is purity of heart, and there’s sufficient evidence in Scripture and the fathers for that. But what I’m saying here is, among other things, that we should read the Gospels through the eye and not merely with the eye. We shouldn’t read, for example, today’s Gospel and think that the details of the story exhaust the whole meaning of it. It’s not enough to walk away from this Gospel, saying: “Well, evidently Jesus was some sort of wonder-worker since He gave sight to that blind man. The power of God must have been at work in Him.” That’s true enough, but how is that going to change your life? How are you going to develop a deep and clear spiritual perception if you only observe the facts of the story? What is going to make you get up and follow Him, glorifying God all the way?
The public ministry of Christ begins with Him saying: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Gospel.” The root of this word “repent” is the Greek metanoia, a change of mind and heart, literally change of the nous, that spiritual/intellectual capacity we have which the fathers sometimes call the “eye of the soul” or the “eye of the heart.” This means we have to start seeing things a different way; we have to perceive with understanding rather than merely observe events. St Paul prayed that the Ephesians would have the eyes of their hearts enlightened, so that they would know that to which God had called them, and that they would thus acquire a spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge of God (see Eph. 1:17-20).
So let us, when we hear in the Gospel that Christ has given sight to a blind man, not give the jaded response: “Oh, it’s another one of those healings He performed,” and walk away unmoved. Let us rather see through the eye, the eye of the soul, and perceive that God is trying to heal our vision, to remove all distortions and impediments. He wants to be able to tell us, as he did the blind man: “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.”
Jesus said: “I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (Jn. 12:46). This means that if we don’t acquire spiritual perception through faith, it’s our own darn fault! Jesus has come as the Light, and He gives us the grace to see. It is only our stubborn selfishness and our refusal to break out of our own little narrow world that keeps us blind to the glory and goodness and love of God. He wants us to discover Him everywhere, for that’s where He is. And through the gift of faith He has given us eyes to see. Let us open them fully at last, and receive clear vision and the capacity for spiritual perception, that we may, without holding anything back, follow Jesus and give God the glory.
