Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen! A homily for the Sixth Sunday of Pascha, the Sunday of the Blind Man, 7533 (2025) from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Church in Winfield, Pennsylvania, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen! Today we mark the Sixth Sunday of Pascha, the Sunday of the Blind Man. On Wednesday the Church will mark the leave-taking of the Pascha season. That night we will hold Vigil here for the Feast of the Ascension, and then Thursday morning Liturgy for the Feast of the Ascension. Wednesday morning will be our last official “Christ is Risen!” greeting for this season.
Brothers and Sisters, the Church in Her Wisdom placed the account of the healing of the Blind Man as the last Sunday of the Pascha season. This is the sixth public miracle recorded of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John. Each Sunday of Pascha is a type of liturgical icon for us in which we participate in the timelessness of the Resurrection of our Lord across the Season, which is considered in the Church to be one day, like the one day that began Creation. For the time of Pascha is the end or purpose of Creation, and in the Day of Resurrection we will continue to participate every Sunday and every time we participate in the Eucharist and indeed every day we pray and live as Christians following our baptism in Christ.
Thomas Sunday reminded us to be believers in faith even if we have not seen Jesus Christ, to Whom Thomas witnessed for us. The Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women and the Righteous Joseph of Arimathea remind us to be awake to the Resurrection and faithful in serving our Lord. The Paralytic and Samaritan Woman remind us to be alive to the Living Water with which we are blessed in Baptism and the Eucharist, which is the Holy Spirit that is coming for us at Pentecost and already with us in the mysteries of the Church. We encounter that Living Water today even in the account of the spittle with which Jesus made clay to anoint the blind man’s eyes for his healing. It reminds us to open the eyes of our soul fully as we head toward Ascension and then Pentecost, and be mindful of the spiritual and social and perhaps even physical attacks we will face for our witness to life with eyes open.
St. John Chrysostom wrote of the upcoming Ascension that, “Following His Ascension, the Lord sits with His Heavenly Father in the Heavens and at the same time, He is present with the faithful Christians in the Divine Liturgy… His Presence fills the Earth… and the Heavens! Thus, together with Christ, the Christian who is in the Church and communes is at the same time on Earth and in Heaven.”
But what kind of spiritual blindness do we face as Orthodox Christians today in the world? Weighed down with earthly cares, we do not in our society often consider how dynamic and fleeting is the material reality around us and under our feet, except virtually in our worlds online, which however we think we can control. Modern physics reminds us of how matter is also a flow of energy, waves and particles at the same time, not the solid we think. Quantum entanglement shows us the mystery of multiple dimensions. But Orthodoxy has already been there thousands of years ago. We know Creation is dynamic, but we also know Who governs that dynamism and what sustains it, namely God and His providences. God the Holy Trinity and the uncreated energies of God encompass us, they shape Creation and through God’s willings redeem us.
The Orthodox Christian scholar Vladimir Lossky, whose work we study in our parish Orthodoxy class, wrote, “The Eastern tradition knows nothing of ‘pure nature’ to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For it, there is no natural or ‘normal’ state since grace is implied in the act of creation itself…. The world, created in order that it might be deified, is dynamic, lending always toward its final end, predestined in the ‘thought-wills’ [or logoi of God]. These latter have their centre in the Word, the hypostatic Wisdom of the Father who gives expression to Himself in all things and who brings all things, in the Holy Spirit, towards union with God…” (p. 81)
So there is a dynamic dimension to life beyond our efforts to make things static whether by our will or by dwelling online in virtual reality. I long sought truth in the natural world, spending time outdoors, touched by natural beauty. This is something God does give us for inspiration. But what we call the natural world in our fallen state also of course can be cruel. I encountered in the death of my older sister in her 20s and in the broken hearts of my father and mother and ruins of our family life. Yet God gave me the sinner new life and resurrection in the Orthodox Church. He opened my eyes by His grace to see a bit of how His grace is our real natural life and world, deeper and richer and beyond even beauties and dangers of fallen Creation. We find the redeemed Creation in the Church, which is our portal to deeper and more real dimensions of life. Through opened eyes we can find what St. Isaac the Syrian describes,
a heart which is burning with charity for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons—for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes becoming filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion which seizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain, being inflicted upon a creature. This is why such a man never ceases to pray also for the animals, for the enemies of Truth, and for those who do him evil moved by the infinite pity which reigns in the hearts of those who are becoming united to God. (Lossky, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 88)
My eyes still tear up when I hear the words of hope and love by our Lord just before he raises Lazarus from the dead, a fitting coda to our Pascha season: “I am the Resurrection and the Life, he who believes in me, though he were dead, shall live, and he who lives and believes in me shall never die.” O the wonders dear brothers and sisters, of that which we cannot see without the sight that Christ gives to us!
The Russian Orthodox Bishop Tikhon (Shevnukov), author of Everyday Saints, wrote this:
“Perhaps today’s story of the healing of the blind man is especially important… for our generation…. the Pharisees cast him out of the synagogue, and severed him from the society of the Israelites…. He was deprived of all rights. From that time on, according to Jewish law, no one could associate with him, help him, or live with him. His mother and father disowned him…. At that very moment the Savior Himself finds him [again] and says to him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? The one who had gained his sight asks, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? The Savior then says to him something very similar to what He said to the Samaritan woman… Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. The man blind who was born blind needed no other proof. He worshipped Him as God…. It is no coincidence that a week ago the Holy Church emphasized the Savior’s same revelation to a sinful but pure-hearted Samaritan woman. Both of these people in the Gospels saw God.
“All of us are a generation of people born blind. We were born, for the most part, outside of faith in the Lord. According to an ancient plan, our spiritual eyes should have remained closed until our very death. And millions upon millions of people would have gone to eternity without knowing God, or their own souls, or even the spiritual world itself. Everything was done to ensure that we, born blind from parents who were to one or another extent born blind, would remain that way forever. But God worked a miracle on us. Without asking us whether we believe or not, without tormenting us over this question, but to the contrary knowing that this faith was not in us, the Lord anointed us with clay and sorrows as with holy myrrh, and millions upon millions of people in our country [Russia] were healed. Their spiritual eyes were opened. Our contemporaries, blind people who were healed liked the man blind from birth, where subjected to difficult trials, interrogations, and mockery by the Pharisees of this age, and many of us were cut off from the society of our friends and relatives. What happened to the man blind from birth in the Gospels happened also to many of us.
“But why did the Savior heal him in particular? Why was this miracle of God manifest in this particular person, and not in the whole crowd of people standing near him, who were just as misfortunate, injured, or sick? Two weeks ago we read in the Gospels how the Savior healed the paralytic. That man thirsted and hoped for healing over the course of thirty-eight years, but the man blind from birth did not even have faith, for he did not know who to believe in. He simply could not see the Lord…. The Savior revealed His Divinity to precisely this man, because He saw his courageous confession before the enemies of the Truth, the enemies of God. Even so, why was one man healed, and no one else?…. Why, out of the millions and billions of those born blind does only a little flock gain its sight spiritually? Why, out of hundreds of different nations living in the world, do only a few of them confess the saving Orthodox Faith?
“Humanly speaking, it is not fair. Humanly speaking:…. Even during the Savior’s earthly life, when He walked the earth, He chose out of many only those… whom He chose. The same thing is happening now…. So who, after all, are those whom the Savior chooses?…. Wealthy and great people? Of course not. Only the poor? Again, wrong. Amongst God’s chosen were people of every economic class. Or perhaps they were people who were rich in something else—reason and wisdom? Nothing of the sort. There were wise people who recognized the feebleness of their minds, and there were people entirely unlearned, even holy fools, to whom extraordinary revelations were suddenly sent. Perhaps these were people rich in sins, because the Lord was sent to save sinners? But we know that all are sinful before God. Or maybe these were people rich in faith? Yes, the Lord required faith of people. But He healed the man blind from birth without the latter’s faith. He healed the man sick of the palsy, for whom the roof of the house was opened and broken up, and who was lowered down before Him (cf. Mk. 2:4), only because of the faith of those who had brought him. But we also know that the demons believe, and tremble… So who does the Lord choose for His inheritance?
“The Apostle says in one of his epistles, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. 2:20). These are the ones whom the Savior chooses: those who can deny themselves and become God’s dwelling. Our gaining of sight consists in our beginning to see ourselves as full of sins and capable of every evil and betrayal. Our gaining of sight consists in our seeing the world as it really is: lying in evil. Our gaining of sight consists in our beginning to see and appreciate in this world only God’s great mercy toward us and all of blind humankind.”
Once long ago an English translator of Scripture whose work contributed to the King James Bible, sentenced to death famously said, “Lord open thou the King of England’s eyes!” Brothers and sisters, let us pray that our eyes be opened and those of our society, as we witness like the blind man to our Resurrection in the Orthodox Church, to our friends, enemies, family, co-workers, neighbors, strangers whom we meet, and the powers that be, proclaiming joyously: Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!