Unable to See

ON THE SUNDAY before Lent (formerly known as Quinquagesima), Anthony was concerned with the topic of blindness. The Gospel of the day, from St Luke, recounted how our Lord, journeying to Jerusalem for His Passion, healed a blind man by the gates of Jericho. The man had evidently heard of Jesus of Nazareth, and so when he learned that Jesus was passing by, he called out to him as “Son of David”. Hearing him, our Lord stopped and asked him what he wanted. “Lord, my sight!” he replied. “Your faith has saved you,” said Jesus, and at once the blind man was able to see again.

Strangely, although Anthony says he will talk about three blind men, none of them are the man in this Gospel story! The second and third are Tobias and the ‘angel’ or bishop of Laodicea, but for his first example the Saint takes “the man in the Gospel, blind from birth, whose sight was restored with mud and spittle”. This blind man is not the man (named ‘Bartimaeus’ by Mark the Evangelist) who sat by the roadside at Jericho, but the man in St John’s Gospel, who after Jesus had put mud and spittle on his eyes, was told to wash in the pool of Siloam. This Gospel is nowadays read in Year A, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and optionally in other years. Clearly, Anthony was only concerned with the theme of blindness in general, rather than the precise details of the Gospel of the day.

 

Spiritual hearing

 

The man blind from birth, Anthony explains, stands allegorically for the human race, which since the fall of Adam has been unable to see. It is, of course, our spiritual vision that is impaired. In the natural physical order, the two principal senses whereby we learn about the world are sight and hearing. These have their counterparts in the spiritual order. But whereas in the natural order sight is paramount, in the spiritual order, and in our present state, we rely on the ‘spiritual hearing’ which is faith. We do not have a direct vision of God or of the spiritual realm, but (as St Paul says) “faith comes from hearing”. We are told (by our Lord himself, and through the preaching of the Church) truths about God and about ourselves. We have to trust the person who tells us, we cannot verify what they say independently. Bartimaeus believed in Jesus as “Son of David” (that is, as the promised Messiah), and so he called upon Him for mercy and healing. It was in this sense that his faith healed him. One might almost say that his faith in Jesus ‘obliged’ our Lord not to let him down. The king must not betray the loyalty of his followers.

 

Missing the mark

 

Christ healed the blind man by anointing his eyelids with a paste made from the dust of the earth and His own spittle. Anthony twice in this season refers to this. In his treatment of Septuagesima (the third Sunday before Lent) he writes, “The spittle, coming from the head of the Father, signifies Wisdom, since the head of Christ is God. As the spittle is joined to dust, so divinity is joined to humanity, that the eyes of the man born blind may be enlightened – that is, the eyes of the human race which was blinded by our first parent.” (Sermons, I, 12) He uses almost the same words for Quinquagesima (Sermons, I, 51).

Adam, who represents our original humanity, as God intended it, lost the spiritual insight that was native to him by misusing his freedom. By wishing to be “like God” (asserting his own autonomy, instead of his subordinate status), he saw things wrongly, and lost the power to direct himself properly. His distorted vision meant that he would continually “miss the mark”, the root meaning of the Greek hamartia, which we translate as ‘sin’. His only hope was to listen carefully to the directions given by God, the Torah, Law or Teaching. This, in the Old Testament, was the Word and Wisdom of God, enshrined in the Scriptures.

 

Prevenient grace

 

In our Lord Jesus Christ, that Word and Wisdom has taken human form. The humanity of Christ, including of course His materiality, His ‘fleshiness’, is the instrument whereby God heals the human race. Anthony sees this vividly expressed in the union of spittle and dust. The Power that heals is nothing less than the Divinity Itself; but the means employed is the physicality of the Word Incarnate. In the narrative, the miracle was completed when the blind man obeyed the instruction (his trust in what he had heard was his faith), and washed in the pool of Siloam, a type of Baptism. Anthony wishes us to understand that in order to see clearly – to regain our spiritual vision – we must believe and be baptised: but the initiative and the power of Christ comes before. Grace is (as theologians say) ‘prevenient’. We respond to what God has already done for us. This is a difficult notion.

In a further comment, Anthony identifies human blindness with pride (the sin of Satan, the root of Adam’s sin). The proud man sees himself as an eagle, high flying and clear sighted. He thinks to look down on others, but the wings that sustain him are arrogance and vainglory. In reality, he resembles the ostrich. Job asks, “Can the wing of the ostrich be compared with the plumage of the stork or falcon?” (Job 39.13) Whereas those other birds can indeed fly high, the ostrich is completely earthbound. The ostrich, says Anthony, is the hypocrite, with beautiful feathers (ostrich plumes make wonderful decorations), but which are deceitful because they are unable to perform what they profess. Another translation of the Hebrew text runs, “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly; but are they the pinions and plumage of love?” The ostrich lays her eggs on the ground, and then abandons them to their fate. “She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers.” The godless person is callous towards others, unlike the proverbial Pelican, who feeds her young with her own blood (a type of Christ – his certainly are “the pinions and plumage of love”). Far from resembling the mighty eagle, king of birds, the conceited ostrich is a ridiculous creature that buries its head in the sand (another image of blindness), and only saves itself from danger by running away.

 

Anthony’s prayer

 

The Saint ends this Commentary (which contains far more than I have been able to outline) with a beautiful prayer:

“Let us pray, then, dear brethren, and ask straightway for devotion of mind; so that our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave light to the man born blind, to Tobit and to the Angel of Laodicea, may be pleased to illuminate the eyes of our souls with the faith of his Incarnation and with the ointment of his Passion. Thus may we be enabled to see the Son of God himself, the Light of Light, in the splendour of the saints and the brightness of the angels. May he grant this, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.”