Oops!
One of my brother priests shared this story at our recent retreat. A bishop had a young boy learning to serve in the altar — the kind of kid who fidgets with the censer, lights things on fire, and causes general disruption during the service. Most priests know the type: the one you quietly ask to sit in the pews during the sermon, just for everyone’s safety.
One day, before the Liturgy, the bishop pulled the boy aside. He said, “Son, something very special is going to happen today. It’ll be the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen. But you might miss it if you’re not standing perfectly still and watching the altar.”
The boy’s eyes went wide. “What will happen?”
“I don’t want to spoil it,” said the bishop. “You’ll have to watch very carefully.”
So the boy stood like a tin soldier throughout the entire service — motionless, transfixed, watching the altar with an attention he had never given anything before. Every time the bishop glanced over, there he was, still as stone.
After the service, the boy walked up to the bishop and said, “You told me I would see something amazing. But you didn’t say it would be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
That little boy is like the man in today’s Gospel. Just as the blind man’s eyes were opened by Christ, this boy’s eyes were opened too — opened to something that had been there all along, but out of sight.
And maybe that is one of the greatest forms of blindness in our world today: we have forgotten how to see, how to see reality.
Many of us are not blind because we openly reject Christ. We are blind because our attention has become scattered. We move from notification to notification, anxiety to anxiety, distraction to distraction. We rush through prayers. We stand in church physically present while our minds are somewhere else entirely. And slowly, over time, we lose the ability to perceive grace even when it stands directly before us.
The tragedy of blindness is more than not just seeing. It is that we have stopped expecting that there is anything worth seeing.
Ugh!
In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees suffer from exactly this kind of blindness.
The blind man encounters Christ and receives his sight. The evidence stands right in front of them. A man born blind can now see. And yet the Pharisees refuse to recognize what is happening.
They had already decided what they were willing to see.
And that danger still exists for us.
Spiritual blindness is not usually dramatic. Most of the time it is ordinary. It is the slow hardening of attention. The gradual narrowing of wonder. The assumption that we already know what reality is, what worship is, what prayer is, what God can do.
Orthodoxy does not ask us to invent spiritual meaning for ourselves or chase emotional experiences. In fact, the Church warns us that feelings alone can deceive us. Instead, the Church teaches us how to see reality truthfully.
We learn to recognize Christ through a way of life that has been tested across centuries: through Scripture, worship, prayer, repentance, ascetic struggle, and communion with the saints. Not private fantasies. Not self-created spirituality. But the living witness of the Church from the Apostles until now.
And that is exactly what the Church has been doing to us throughout Lent and Pascha.
Sunday by Sunday, she has been teaching us how to see.
Aha!
We began with the Sunday of Orthodoxy, proclaiming that God truly became flesh and entered the visible world. Holy icons announce that matter itself can become radiant with divine glory.
Then Gregory Palamas taught us that God is not merely an idea to think about. His light can truly be encountered. The light of Tabor is real, and human beings can be transformed by it.
Then came the Cross. The world believes power looks like domination and control. But at the Cross, Christ reveals what reality actually looks like: self-emptying love stronger than death itself.
John Climacus and Mary of Egypt showed us how this vision becomes rooted within us. Through prayer, repentance, stillness, struggle, and grace, the human heart itself begins to change. Theology becomes biography.
Sunday by Sunday without fail we gathered together because the Church has been restoring our sight.
Then came Pascha.
At the midnight service we heard: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Thomas Sunday showed us that Christ does not reject wounded or hesitant faith. He comes even to doubting disciples and opens their eyes.
The Myrrh-bearing Women proclaimed hope to a world buried in fear and grief.
The Paralytic and the Samaritan Woman revealed that Christ’s healing reaches outward — beyond every barrier, every failure, every place of weakness and thirst.
And now we arrive at the Blind Man.
A man born into darkness suddenly sees.
And notice something remarkable: the blind man gradually comes to know who Christ is. At first he calls Him simply “the man called Jesus.” Then “a prophet.” Finally, at the end, he falls down and worships Him as Lord.
His physical sight becomes spiritual sight.
That is the true miracle.
Whee!
And this is the good news for us today: Christ still opens blind eyes.
He still teaches distracted people how to pay attention again.
He still reveals Himself to people who thought they had gone spiritually numb.
He still heals people who have spent years standing in church without really seeing what stands before them.
The little altar boy did not see something the bishop secretly added to the Liturgy that day. He simply paid attention long enough for the veil to become thin.
And the same thing can happen to us.
Not because we force mystical experiences.
Not because we manufacture emotions.
But because Christ is truly here.
The Kingdom of God is not imaginary. The saints are not imaginary. Grace is not imaginary. The light of Christ shining in the darkness is not imaginary.
The blind man saw because Christ came near to him.
And Christ is near to us now.
Yeah!
So the question this Sunday places before us is simple:
Are we willing to look?
Are we willing to slow down enough to pay attention?
To stand in the Liturgy attentively?
To pray with our hearts instead of constantly filling every silence with chatter?
To listen carefully to the Scriptures?
To notice the person in front of us?
To ask Christ to heal not only our eyes, but our attention?
The Paschal season is nearly complete. But the vision it offers does not end when the Pentecostarion closes.
The light still shines in the darkness.
Christ is still present.
The Kingdom is still breaking into the world.
And for those willing to look — truly look — the most beautiful thing they have ever seen may already be standing right in front of them.
May the Lord open our eyes.
Amen.