Homily for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost
Dear brothers and sisters! What a precious treasure is sincere, warm, heartfelt prayer to the Lord. In it, we bring to the Lord our sorrows, our gratitude, and our requests. The Lord, in response to sincere prayer offered with faith and repentance, sends us His countless blessings and miracles, testifying to His power and might. By our faith and God’s mercy, mountains are moved—not earthly mountains, though they too obey the faithful—but the mountains of our sins, sorrows, and enemy attacks; our spiritual and bodily infirmities are healed, passions and sins are overcome, and moral strength is granted to perform works of righteousness.
In today’s Gospel, we heard about Jesus Christ’s healing of two blind men and a mute. As Jesus walked, two blind men followed Him persistently, crying out: “Have mercy on us, Jesus, Son of David,” as the evangelist Matthew tells us. When He entered the house, the blind men approached Him. And Jesus said to them: “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him: “Yes, Lord!” Then He touched their eyes and said: “According to your faith let it be done to you.” And their eyes were opened (Matt. 9:28–30).
Why, when the blind men asked the Lord, was their prayer heard? To understand this, let’s look at how they asked. At first, they addressed Christ: “Jesus, Son of David.” To call someone “Son of David” in Galilee at that time was not without danger. One had to be very bold to confess Jesus as the Son of David then, because the Pharisees and scribes understood this as recognizing Him as the Messiah-Savior. But the faith that enlightened the blind was so strong that they, being blind, acknowledged: this is no ordinary man, He is truly the Son of God; and therefore, the Lord healed precisely these blind men, though there were undoubtedly many other afflicted people around.
Often, we come to church with some need and very much want our petition to the Lord to be fulfilled. For our prayer to be answered, we must persistently ask the Lord with firm faith. Sometimes, we evaluate the fruits of our prayer hastily and incorrectly. By carefully delving into what today’s Gospel teaches us, let’s try to understand what we need to do for our prayer to be fulfilled.
The two Gospel blind men asked the Lord for bodily sight, that is, for what we so often ask the Lord—for health. Blindness is a terrible condition; it is a heavy cross—not to see God’s light. The blind are deprived of all the blessings that sighted people have in interacting with the external world. At that time in Israel, there were many blind people, but the Lord healed precisely these ones because He saw how firmly and undoubtedly they believed that He would heal them, how persistently they asked, following after the Lord, imploring Him until He deemed them worthy of the miracle and healed them. It is said: when He entered the house, the blind men approached Him with their request for healing. Jesus asked them if they believed that He could heal them. Receiving an affirmative answer, the Lord touched their eyes, and they were opened, and He said to them: “See that no one knows about this miracle.” As soon as they went out, a mute man possessed by a demon was brought to Jesus. This mute man himself could not ask for healing because the demon had bound his tongue. Therefore, the Lord did not ask him about faith, but undoubtedly perceiving it in the mute man’s soul, He commanded the demon to come out, and the ability to speak returned to the mute.
How often we are lax in our spiritual life. And it happens that if something is quickly granted to a person in response to his prayerful request, he becomes complacent, and his faith weakens. When a person is satiated with earthly blessings, when everything is going well, sometimes he forgets God because of his prosperity. And the Lord, knowing our human nature damaged by sin—ingratitude and irresponsibility, lack of faith and self-love—chastens and punishes us, allowing troubles and illnesses, that is, He teaches us. People say: “God has punished,” meaning He has given instruction for our enlightenment, so that we constantly turn to Him.
How often a person, mired in vanity and earthly affairs, thinks that this is real life, but the Lord wants to call us to another life—spiritual, prayerful. And during trials allowed by the Lord, we first pray out of grief and sorrow, but then, seeing the fruits of prayer, sometimes we begin to pray out of joy, love, and gratitude to God. Though often, having received what we asked from God, we forget the past sufferings and begin to live again a carnal, sinful life. But the Lord calls us to ask for greater and more important things—spiritual sight leading to the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, He patiently waits until our requests for the earthly turn into requests for the spiritual, until we are so strengthened in spirit that we count our earthly life as nothing compared to spiritual treasures. The Lord, by His mercy and wisdom, through sorrows and illnesses, elevates us—who so love our flesh and earthly comforts—to heavenly heights. For our prayer to be fulfilled, we must ask the Lord not for earthly blessings, but for heavenly, spiritual ones, thanking Him for the joys and sorrows sent to us for salvation.
To reveal the firm faith of the blind men, the Lord, as if not knowing, asked them if they believed that He could heal them. They answered: “Yes, Lord!” Then the Lord said that for the believer, nothing is impossible: “According to your faith let it be done to you.” Therefore, the indispensable condition under which the Lord fulfills our prayers is firm, unshakable, and deep faith.
These two blind men had not yet been enlightened by holy baptism, yet they persistently followed Christ, seeking mercy from Him in their need. But we, enlightened by holy baptism and having healthy bodily eyes, sometimes do not follow Christ, who showed us an example of meekness, abstinence, and purity, but follow His adversary, that is, the devil, indulging our flesh, giving ourselves over to drunkenness, debauchery, slander, envy… The example of the blind men, who persistently followed Christ, instructs us—in our life, we must always follow only the Lord in humility, purity, and guilelessness, and then He will fulfill our prayers, enlighten our spiritual eyes, so that we may behold the Creator in His creations on earth, and then in the Kingdom of God.
When the Lord healed the blind men, He commanded them to be silent about the miracle performed. Why did the Lord command such silence? The mystery of the miracle should bear fruits of gratitude and humility: gratitude for the fact that the Lord Himself in the miracle drew near to us, and humility from our unworthiness in this approach of Divine love. And if, when the Lord grants a miracle in response to our prayer to Him, we do not have humility and reverence, but proudly tell those around us about God’s gifts, thinking: “This happened to me, while it doesn’t happen to many others,” then gradually vanity will poison our soul. Having received what the Lord grants us by His mercy, we often forget that where sin abounded, precisely where help is most needed, where a person cannot cope alone, there the all-powerful Divine grace acts with special force. We forget that the Lord enters our life with a miracle because we are sometimes so sinful and weak, so powerless and lacking in will. We must be cautious in glorifying the Lord for His miracles, so that due to our weakness and spiritual blindness, we do not appropriate His glory to ourselves, do not destroy humility in ourselves, in which we should sing of His miracles: “Who is so great a God as our God? Thou art the God who works wonders!” (Ps. 76). And if the Lord has performed a miracle over us, then first of all, we must glorify Him by our deeds throughout the earth, giving Him our whole life, living according to His laws, but in no way appropriating to ourselves the action of His miracles. For our prayer to be fulfilled, we must learn to be silent about the Lord’s mercy, in humility considering ourselves unworthy of His blessings and miracles.
So, brothers and sisters, our Christian duty, seeing the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, is to thank Him in deed and word. He, coming to earth, humbly walked through cities and villages, preaching the Gospel, healing every disease and infirmity in people, delivering them from sins and passions, calling them to serve one another, as the apostle said: “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves, for even Christ did not please Himself” (Rom. 15:1).
Let us persistently ask the Lord for the granting of spiritual sight, for deliverance from the slavery of sin, let us ask for the eternal Kingdom, the incorruptible Kingdom of righteousness, thanksgiving, peace, love, and infinite blessedness, and the Lord, according to our faith, will enlighten our spiritual eyes. Let us seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all the rest, by God’s mercy, will be added to us.