Do you believe that I can do it? - the Lord asks them. Why does He, the Seer and the Knower of Hearts, knowing and seeing their faith, ask this question? In order for them to openly confess their faith, as much for their own sake, as for the sake of others present. For an open confession of faith confirms the faith of both those who confess and those who hear.

Oh, Lord! - answer the blind people. From the joy that Christ addresses them at all, faith in Him and in His power burned in them even more. Oh, Lord! They no longer call him the Son of David—that seems to them insufficient and not entirely accurate—but directly the Lord. In this lies their confession of faith: Jesus Christ is the Lord, the God-Man and the Saviour. And that's enough. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13).

Here faith is both in the heart and in the tongue. Now love must come out to meet this faith - and a miracle will be born. And here is love, which will never hesitate to come out to meet faith - never! Then he touched their eyes, and said, According to your faith be it done unto you. And their eyes were opened. As if a burning candle was brought to an extinguished one - and it lit up! The Most-Pure Lord did not abhor either the unclean human body, or the still more impure soul. For to the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15). He stretched out His most pure hands and touched the dark holes, the boarded-up windows, the rotten blind eyes - and the eyes opened. The veil fell, and the light burst into the prison, and made it a palace brightly decorated. According to your faith be it done to you. And the faith was not put to shame: according to their faith it was. Oh, how highly the Lord values His creatures, although they are all smoke and dust under His feet! Demanding faith, the Lord requires the cooperation of people in His work of creation. He could, as the all-wise Chrysostom says, heal all the sick on earth with a single word. But what would have happened in this case? He would equate man with other dumb creatures, who have neither free will, nor the possibility of its free expression, nor higher predestination. He would reduce man to the level of the sun, moon, and stars, which cannot but shine, so they are commanded; and to the level of water in streams and rivers, which cannot but flow - so it is ordered; and to the level of a stone that cannot but rest or fall, as it is commanded. And man is a verbal and rational creature, and he must do what a dumb creature cannot but do, that is, completely surrender himself to God and fulfill the commandments of God. "The Lord commands - I cannot but obey Him," says all nature. "The Lord commands me to obey Him," says the man of Truth. A person must choose, and choose not between two goods, but between good and evil. If he chooses good, he will be a friend of God and an unshakable son in the Kingdom, and he will be more blessed than all nature; if he chooses evil, he will be rejected from the presence of God, and it will be worse for him than for dumb creatures. Such is the will of the Creator - that a person during this life freely determine the choice of good or evil. That is why our Lord Jesus Christ asks people about faith; therefore He calls them to cooperate in the field of their own salvation. The Lord demands very little from people. He demands of them only of their own free will to recognize Him as Almighty God, and themselves as negligible before Him. This is faith, and the Lord constantly seeks this faith in people for the sake of the good and salvation of people themselves.

And Jesus said to them sternly, "See that no one knows." And they went out, and made known about him in all that land. Why did Jesus forbid them to divulge this miracle? First, because He does not seek any glory or praise from men. These glory and praise cannot add one iota to His glory. Secondly, to show that what He does for people, He does out of compassion and love for them, as a mother to His children, and not like sorcerers and sorcerers, servants of the devil, who in their hearts despise people, and what they do, they do to gain glory and praise. Thirdly, in order to teach people a lesson that every good deed should be done for the glory of God, and not out of vanity; let not thy left hand know what thy right hand is doing" (Matt. 6:3). And fourthly, He knows, and would like people to know this: good cannot be hidden; which, however, immediately became clear. For the blind, willy-nilly, could not help but divulge about Him throughout all that land. If their tongue was silent, their eyes spoke. Even if they wanted to remain silent, the power of God, which makes all secrets manifest, forced them to speak and talk. And this is what our Lord Jesus Christ wanted, in order to show them: "Regardless of your will, this matter will be divulged, no matter how hard you try, so that you do not know about it. Do not desire to tell about it only out of vanity or for the sake of praise - whether for yourself or for me. Glorify God - that is the main thing."

And when they went out, they brought to Him a dumb man possessed by demons. And when the demon was cast out, the dumb man began to speak. As thirsty travelers in the desert hurry to the only source of water they have found, so do people thirsting for health, wisdom, strength, kindness, and peace, hurry to our Lord Jesus Christ, the hitherto unseen single Source of all these blessings. And this Source is inexhaustible, and no one who comes to Him leaves without drinking. As soon as the blind left, already with their eyes open and without a guide, the guides of the dumb man possessed by demons came and brought this unfortunate man to the Lord. Dumb possessed! No mind to produce a word, no tongue to pronounce it. The Lord does not ask him about faith, for how can a demoniac believe? And how can a dumb man confess his faith? But the Lord sees the faith of those who brought him. Probably, the Lord had a conversation with them, similar to what He had with the blind men, but the Evangelist, because of the similarity of these conversations, these questions and answers, does not report anything. For those who seek salvation, there are enough teachings in the words spoken about the blind. Those who are irretrievably rolling into the abyss, blaspheming the Savior and the words of salvation, would not be helped by all the words or all the deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ, spoken and accomplished during the entire time of His earthly life. And if all this were written down and described in a stenographic way, I think the world itself would not be able to contain the books that were written, as the Evangelist says (John 21:25). However, what is written is enough for us to believe in the Son of God and have eternal life (John 20:31). Our Evangelist mentions this incident only in two sentences, as if in passing. But imagine what an event it is: to cast out a demon from a possessed person, to heal a person from muteness, to grant him calm and reasonable speech! This event is greater than any war, about which many books have been written. Everyone can fight, but no one can cast out a demon and fulfill the words of dumb lips except God. Whole books could be written about this miracle alone, but the Evangelist mentions it only in two sentences; along with other reasons, also because he wants to show the multiplicity of similar miracles of the greatest Wonderworker of all times, as well as the ease with which the Lord performed such unheard-of miracles.

It is said that first the Lord cast out the demon, and only after that did the dumb man begin to speak. And this miracle shows that the Lord always immediately penetrates into the depths, into the very root of evil. There was an evil spirit in the dumb man, and it was he who bound the man's tongue. It was necessary to expel the evil spirit, and all its bonds and fetters with which it bound the sick man would disappear of their own accord. Therefore, the Lord first casts out the demon, and then fills the person with intellectual and verbal power. This event is to a large extent reminiscent of the healing of the paralytic, to whom the Lord first said: "Thy sins are forgiven thee," and only then: "Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house." Most often, Christ first healed spiritual torments, and only then - bodily defects. Let us imagine that He opened the mouth of the dumb man, but left the demon in him. What would this lead to? Why does a person need the opportunity to speak, if through him, blaspheming God and people, a demon will speak? What is the use of freeing a man from the lesser evil, leaving him in the chains of the greater? And in time, wouldn't the demon be able to seal the sick man's mouth again, making him dumb? O Lord, how wise and expedient is all that Thou doest! We can only marvel at Your inexhaustible wisdom and learn from it ourselves - to do everything we do thoroughly and perfectly.

And the people, being amazed, said, "Never has such a phenomenon happened in Israel." And the Pharisees said, He casteth out demons by the power of the prince of demons. Some are surprised, while others blaspheme. Some rejoice in the good, while others are hardened against the good. The people glorify God, and the leaders of the people think about the devil. The simple-hearted call Christ the Son of David and Lord, and the scribes, the falsely named wise men, call Him the messenger of Beelzebub, the prince of demons! And the blind saw and saw, and the deaf began to hear and heard, and the possessed were healed and knew, and the dumb spoke and confessed, but the wise men of this world, with their minds weighed down with earthly wisdom, and their hearts hardened with vanity and envy, could neither see the Son of God, nor hear, nor know, nor confess. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God (1 Corinthians 3:19).

Never had such a phenomenon happened in Israel, - the people said in surprise. True, Moses, Elijah, and Elisha performed various miracles, but in what way? With the help of his faith, fasting and prayer, on the one hand, and God's grace, on the other. The Living God Himself accomplished great deeds through them. But Christ accomplishes all things by His authority and power. There is the same difference between Him and the ancient miracle-workers as between the sun and the moon: the moon shines with the light that it receives from the sun, while the sun shines with its own. The simple and unprejudiced soul of the people felt this great difference, and therefore the lips of the people confessed: there had never been such a manifestation in Israel. True, the Pharisees do not deny the wondrous miracles of Christ. If they could, they would deny them, conceal them, bribe false witnesses, as at the resurrection of the Lord; but they cannot deny what happened before the eyes of the crowds. Yes, indeed, they do not deny these miracles, but out of malice and deceit they interpret them in their own way. He casts out demons by the power of the prince of demons. More than once they said this to the Lord, and more than once He silenced them with a clear answer (Matt. 12:24-26; Mk. 3:22-26; Lk. 11:17-18). He said to them, "And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then shall his kingdom stand? Truly, it is difficult for any reasonable person to come up with a more ridiculous, illogical, and stupid explanation of the deeds of Christ than that which was born in the darkened minds of the elders and scribes of the people of Israel. To cast out demons with the help of Satan! Is it not the same as saying, "With the help of a father to kill his children"? Or: "With the help of a military commander to defeat and destroy his own army"? But it is not in vain that they say that envy is blind. You can also say that she is funny and stupid. For envy not only hardens the heart and blinds the mind, but also entangles the tongue - and it does not know what it is saying; therefore everything that the tongue of the envious says is mad, ridiculous, and foolish.

Our Lord Jesus Christ paid no attention to this malicious impotence of the envious elders of the people, but hastened to continue His work, in order to save and preserve all those whom the Heavenly Father had given Him, so that none of them should perish (John 17:12). For at the end of today's Gospel reading it says:

And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every infirmity among the people. A city or a village - He does not care. He does not need cities or villages - He needs people. In all the cities and villages, says the Evangelist, in order to emphasize Christ's zeal for the work. For zeal for Thy house hath devoured me (Psalm 68:10). For Him, truly, one day was like a thousand years. The work of Christ was threefold, as the words of the Evangelist show. He taught, He preached, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and He healed every sickness and every infirmity in people. Taught means interpreted the spirit of creation and the Old Testament law. Preaching means laying the foundation for a new creation – the Kingdom of God, the Church of the saints. Healed means that He confirmed His teaching and His preaching by His works.

And the Lord did all this out of love not only for the people of that time, His contemporaries – He is the Contemporary of everything that was, that is, and that will be – but also for us. May He light a lamp in our souls with His light, may He come out with His love to meet our faith, so that from this meeting of God's love and our faith the miracle of our salvation may be born: the healing of our spiritual blindness, our muteness and possession, of all our illnesses and every infirmity.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on us! That we, too, may be vouchsafed to glorify Thy name in all the earth, in all the land of our people, and in all the land of mankind, living and departed. Thy Name and that of Thy Most Glorious and Eternal Father, with Thy Most-Holy, Good, and Life-Giving Spirit, is the Trinity, One-in-Essence and Indivisible, now and ever, at all times and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost. The Gospel of Him Who multiplied the loaves in the empty place

Matt. 58 rec., 14:14-22