Met. Tikhon (Mollard) On The Sunday of The Blind Man
Metropoliotan Tikhon (Mollard) is the Archbishop of Washington DC and Primate of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). The following reflection was original posting on OCA.org as part of an ongoing series of reflections titled Reflections in Christ.
"Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!
“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be manifest in him.” We know that all sickness, pain, and death came into the world on account of human sin; God did not make illness or death or any other evil thing. However, the words of our Lord offer us two important expansions on this basic affirmation. First, though sin is our ancestral inheritance, its specific consequences, in terms of sickness and death, are rarely a matter of personal blame or individual guilt. Rather, we are all guilty of the sins that lie behind the tragedy of illness and death. When we see seemingly unjust suffering, we should not ask: “Why did God do this?” Rather, we should blame ourselves and repent for the suffering that we have caused the world through our sin.
Second, the Lord reminds us that, although human sin is the cause of illness and suffering, nevertheless he can turn these consequences to good. As Joseph says, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” When Christ took on the consequences of sin through his suffering and death on the Cross, he made all human suffering, including illness, a potential pathway to salvation. Because of God’s saving providence, the man’s blindness – a consequence of our individual and collective sin – has been transformed into an opportunity for enlightenment, not just for the blind man, but for all who hear of this healing and witness it through the holy Gospel.
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