in the thirty-first week

Explanation of the mysterious meaning of the Gospel story

To the event of which the Gospel has now related, the Holy Fathers give a mysterious interpretation. They see in the blind man, who has attracted the attention and mercy of the God-Man by intensified supplication and crying, the image of a praying sinner, praying persistently and with weeping, receiving through such prayer the forgiveness of sins and the renewal of the soul by Divine grace [1095]. We are all sinners; we are all in dire need of God's mercy. Sinners! let us consider with attention how the sinner receives God's mercy through prayer.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Gospel relates, was coming out of the city of Jericho. His disciples followed Him, and a multitude of people. A blind man was sitting on the way, begging passers-by for alms. Hearing the noise of a large crowd, he inquired about the reason for the people's assembly. They answered that Jesus was marching, that His presence had attracted this multitude. Then the blind man began to cry out with a loud voice: Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Those who went ahead of the Lord stopped the blind man, commanding him to be silent; but he cried out even more strongly: Son of David, have mercy on me. The Lord stopped and ordered him to be brought to Himself. The blind man was called. He threw off his outer garment and stood before the Lord. The Lord asked him: "What do you want from Me?" The blind man answered: "Lord! I want Thou to grant me sight." The Lord said: See: thy faith shall save thee. The blind man immediately regained his sight and followed Jesus, glorifying God [1096].

Spiritually, all sinners must be recognized as blind: they are definitely blind. They are called blind by the Holy Scriptures [1097]; the very deed proves their blindness. The sight of sinners is so perverted and damaged by sin that it must be justly recognized and called blindness. This blindness is the blindness of the spirit. This blindness is all the more dangerous because it most acknowledges and professes itself to be the most satisfactory, the most excellent eyesight. The blind sinner sees neither God, nor eternity, nor himself, nor the purpose for which man was created, nor the death that awaits him and all men, which is inevitable either for him or for any of the people. Unhappy! he acts out of his blindness, acts for the destruction of himself, acts for the sake of vain and temporal things, pursues only phantoms. And death comes, forgotten by him, tears him away from the field of his activity, presents him to the Judgment of God, which he has never thought about, for which he has not prepared at all. The beginning of the return to sight for a blind sinner is the recognition and confession of blindness, the abandonment of the activity performed under the guidance of this blindness.

Jericho was located in a valley cut by the Jordan River. The terrain occupied by the other cities of Israel is generally mountainous. The lowly position of Jericho depicts our state of falling. A mysterious blind man came out of Jericho. He ceased to participate in the affairs of the inhabitants of the city: he ceased to commit manifest sins through the body; he sat down by the path along which the Saviour and salvation walk, began to beg alms from passers-by, to feed himself sparingly, with alms. The passers-by are the living vessels of the Holy Spirit, which God sent into the world to guide the world to salvation throughout the life of the world [1098]. Those that are passing are the instructions of the pastors of the Church and the ascetics of piety, who temporarily wander on earth like all men: they guide the sinner at the beginning of his conversion; they nourish his smooth soul with knowledge provided by faith from hearing [1099]. The blind man, although he left the city, could not go far from it because of his blindness. He was sitting near the city gates; the rumors of the city reached his ears, disturbed his heart, and confused his mind. In the same way, a blind sinner, when he forsakes gross sins, cannot break ties with sin, both living within him and acting on him from without. And after his conversion he dwells near sin and in sin; sinful thoughts, dreams, and sensations do not cease to disturb his mind and heart. Those who accompany and cooperate with Christ – the Prophets, Apostles and Holy Fathers – announce to the blind that the Saviour is close to him, because the blind man in his darkness cannot in any way imagine that God is near him. God appears to him to be remote, as if he did not exist at all. The blind man, instructed by the word of God that the omnipresent God is closer to him than all the objects of the visible and invisible world, is encouraged and enters into a prayerful feat. He entered into podvig; but his mind is sealed with carnal wisdom, and, being material because of the assimilation of material impressions, cannot pray spiritually; his heart, infected with various addictions, is constantly distracted from prayer by these addictions. The prayer of the blind man is debilitated, substantial, mixed with thoughts and dreams of the flesh and sin, defiled by them, cannot rise from the earth, crawls on the earth, falls to the ground, only makes an effort to rise from the earth. The blind man does not have a satisfactory concept of God: this concept is not characteristic of the carnal state; The prayerful feat of a blind man is also a bodily feat. "Blind," said the Monk Mark the Ascetic, "is he who cries out and says: Son of David! have mercy on me. He still prays bodily, he has not yet acquired spiritual reason." He sits, alone, at the gates of Jericho.

In the field of prayerful podvig, the ascetic encounters many and various obstacles. Their actions and strength are based on the blindness of the ascetic. While the blind man was engaged in begging alms from passers-by, his position was that of a sitting man. And with his initial cries he remained in the position of sitting. There is still no true spiritual progress, there is no spiritual movement in one who is engaged in the study of the word of God by the letter and by bodily prayer. He continues to remain under the influence of sinful thoughts and sensations, under the influence of carnal wisdom; he continues to remain on earth; the procession to heaven is impossible for him, unnatural. He strives in the podvig of prayer, as in a podvig alien to him, forces himself to podvig, draws himself to this podvig, as if to the worst enemy, to an unmerciful murderer. This feeling, this pledge of the natural man to prayer is peculiar to him: it kills, it slays our old man, and the old man fears the sacrifice, wants to avoid it, resists it with all his might. Around the ascetic stand fallen spirits: they did not depart from him, because he did not receive liberation from them, submitting to them by his former sinful life, which preceded his conversion to God. They try to keep him in bondage; they forbid him to pray; they threaten him, embarrass him, take all measures to force him to silence. They bring him unbelief, suggesting that his prayer will not be heard. They bring him hopelessness, remembering the multitude of sins he has committed, vividly imagining them to the imagination and feeling, arousing delight in them in soul and body. They plunder and destroy his prayer, bringing to mind various cares, imagining the need for immediate concern with them. They produce dryness and despondency in the soul, so that the ascetic, seeing the fruitlessness of the podvig, would abandon it. They mock the podvig, mock it as if it were fruitless and vain, because they tremble at its consequences. The ascetic of prayer, who has given himself over to the podvig of prayer far from the occupations of human society, will hear the infernal talk of the demons. He will see his captivity, his chains, and his prison. Thou hast made us, says the great worker of prayer, reproach by our neighbor, mockery and reproach of those around us. All day long my shame is before me, and the frost of my face has covered me, at the voice of the reviler, at the face of the enemy and expelling [1100].

Faith is needed here: thy faith shall save thee, said the Lord to the blind man after he had been healed. Faith is needed for constancy in prayer; constancy, patience and long-suffering are needed; a rejection of false shame and perseverance are needed in order for the podvig to bring forth its wondrous fruit.

They forbade the blind man to cry out, and he cried out all the more; they commanded the blind man to be silent, and he cried out all the louder. This is what we should do: we must overcome and trample down all obstacles to prayer; we must ignore all obstacles and pray all the more zealously and fervently. If at your morning rule your prayer was plundered by thoughts and dreams, and you did not belong to yourself, because of the violence of the passions that overwhelmed you, then do not weaken, do not fall into despondency. With renewed zeal, stand up at the evening rule, earning to listen to your prayers and gathering up your scattered thoughts, like the leader of Israel, who said to his soldiers: Let us be of good courage and be strong for our people and for the cities of our God, and the Lord will do good in His [His] eyes" (1101). In prayerful podvig, it is necessary to renounce oneself, to leave our success to the will of our God, Who at a time known to Him gives grace-filled prayer to the one who, by his own podvig, actively proves his will to have it [1102]. I do not have my soul honest to myself [1103], says the Apostle;  those who consider themselves worthy of grace are deceived by pride and self-conceit. If during the year our progress in prayer, despite constant exercise in it, turned out to be meagre and insignificant, next year let us make the efforts in our power to make the progress fruitful. If ten years have passed, if dozens of years have passed, and we have not yet seen the desired fruit, let us try to remain faithful to the podvig in the remaining days of our lives. The treasure brought by podvig is eternal; it is of immeasurable value: it is not at all strange that God's Providence allows us to work which, even if only slightly, would correspond to the crowning acquisition of it.

The main condition for success in prayer is that prayer should always be performed with the greatest reverence and attention. For this, it is necessary not only to abandon a sinful life, but also to withdraw from the city, which mainly depicts the rejection of all cares and cares during prayer. We achieve this when we entrust everything that concerns us to the Lord. The Holy Church invites us to such devotion to God; she often recalls this devotion, saying: "Let us commit ourselves, one another, and all our life to Christ our God" [1104]. Attentive prayer is aided by the remembrance of the omnipresence and omniscience of God. If God is present in every place, then He is also present in the place of our prayer. If He sees everything, then He also sees the disposition of our hearts, the mood of our minds. Standing at prayer, we stand before the face of God, at the judgment of God; we have the opportunity to propitiate God with our prayerful cry and lamentation. Remembering the uncertainty of the hour of death also incites to fervent, warmest prayers. We will not sin at all if every time we pray, we pray as if in the last hour of our life, as if in the hour of our coming end. When the mind pays attention to prayer, the heart also listens to it, expressing and proving its attention with a feeling of repentance. For the most convenient attainment to the state of attention, the Holy Fathers advise to pray slowly, as if enclosing the mind in the words of the prayer, so that not a single word escapes attention. An elusive word is a lost word! A prayer that escaped attention is a lost prayer!

A mind that has not acquired the habit of attention has difficulty in accustoming itself to it. This should not lead to despondency and confusion for the ascetic of prayer. "Inconstancy," says St. John of the Ladder, "is characteristic of the mind" [1105] of fallen man, a mind corrupted by sin. "When your mind," the great John continues to instruct the ascetic of prayer, "is carried away from attention because of its infancy, you again introduce it into the words of prayer. If you do this, then He Who appoints the boundaries of the sea will come to you and command your mind: Come to this in your prayer, and do not pass away, but in you your waves will be broken" [1106]: let your thoughts be concentrated in you. Constant labor in acquiring attention is an active testimony before God of our sincere desire to have attention. But it is impossible for a man to bind his spirit by his own efforts: for this he needs the command of the All-Supreme Spirit, the Spirit Who is the Lord and Creator of our spirit [1107]. And the Spirit does this work. This is the Messenger Who is sent by the Son of God to the blind man sitting and crying out, Who calls the blind man to Jesus [1108]. The Spirit of God announces the Son of God [1109]. The Spirit, having overshadowed the servant of Christ, instructs him in all truth,[1110] and instructs him also in attentive prayer. The attention of the mind during prayer is its complete striving towards the Truth, it is its correct state and action; Absent-mindedness, on the contrary, is a state of self-deception, is a sign that the mind is carried away by the teaching of falsehood, by thoughts and dreams that are brought to it by demons, and arise from a nature that is sick with sin. The state of deep, constant attention during prayer comes from the contact of Divine grace with our spirit. The bestowal of grace-filled attention on the one who prays is the original spiritual gift of God [1111].

The blind man, hearing the invitation, revived, delighted by this invitation, gets up, throws off his outer garment, and goes to appear before the Lord. "When the mind, through grace-filled attention," say the Fathers, "is united with the soul, then it is filled with ineffable sweetness and joy" [1112]. Then begins the spiritual progress of the ascetic of prayer; then, by the power and purity of prayer, he aspires with all his being to God; then all extraneous thoughts and dreams depart, disappear, as St. David said: Depart from me, all you who work iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping, the Lord has heard my prayer, the Lord has accepted my prayer. Let all my enemies, the outcast spirits, be ashamed and troubled, let them return and be ashamed. The overthrow of outer garments means the abandonment of many and different external forms of prayer; they are replaced by prayer in the spiritual cell, which embraces and unites in itself all the particular deeds. Being a vast work, it absorbs and combines in itself the entire life of the ascetic. "There are many kinds of virtue," said the Monk Nil of Sorsky, "but they are particular; but prayer of the heart is the source of all blessings: the soul is watered with it, like a garden with abundant waters" [1114]. Pure prayer is standing before the face of God. He who stands before God asks for enlightenment and receives grace-filled enlightenment of the mind and heart. He enters into true knowledge of God and divine services: he no longer returns to his former state of immobility, to the gates of the city; but, joining the rest of the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, he will follow Him. He has all the possibility and the necessary ability for such a sequence. "Whoever prays with his lips," says St. Symeon the New Theologian, "but has not yet acquired spiritual reason and cannot pray with his mind, is like a blind man who cried out: Son of David! have mercy on me. But he who has acquired spiritual reason and prays with his mind, whose spiritual eyes have been opened, is like the same blind man when the Lord healed him, when his sight was restored, and when he saw the Lord, he no longer called Him the Son of David, but confessed Him to be the Son of God and gave Him the worship befitting God" [1115].

Faith is the foundation of prayer. Whoever believes in God, as one should believe, will certainly turn to God through prayer, and will not depart from prayer until he receives God's promises, until he is assimilated to God, until he is united with God. "Faith," said St. John of the Ladder, "is a standing of the soul devoid of doubt, unshaken by any oppositions. A believer is one who not only confesses God as almighty, but also believes that he will receive everything from Him. Faith is the mother of silence" [1116], both in the cell and in the heart. Whoever believes that God is vigilantly caring for him, places all his hope in Him, calms his heart with hope, with the help of hope removes all cares from himself and devotes himself wholeheartedly to the study of the will of God, revealed to mankind in the Holy Scriptures, revealed even more abundantly by the feat of prayer. By faith in God, the ascetic endures and overcomes all the obstacles arising from the fallen nature and erected by the spirits of malice, obstacles that increase to confuse his prayer, to deprive him of the means of communion with God. Thou hast been with me in multiplicity from my youth; On my back she made sinners, continuing her iniquity[1117]. But I, strengthened and guided by faith, have constantly lifted up my eyes, my mind and my heart, to Thee, O my Lord. Behold, as the eyes of a servant are in the hand of his master, as the eyes of a handmaid are in the hand of his mistress: so are our eyes to the Lord our God, until He will be generous to us. Amen.