Healing of the Blind Man

Christ is Risen!

The miracle of healing the man born blind by Jesus is one of the miracles recorded in Saint John’s gospel and is read in Eastern Christian churches on the sixth Sunday of Pascha.

The gospel text relates that Jesus together with His disciples come upon a man blind from birth. The disciples ask the Lord why the man had been born blind. After answering their question, Jesus spits on the ground to make clay with which to anoint the blind man’s eyes. Jesus then orders the man to go wash in the pool of Siloam. After doing so, the blind man receives his sight.

According to Christian tradition, the name ascribed to the man born blind is Celidonius. This tradition is attested in both Eastern and Western Christianity. Saint Dmitri of Rostov, in his Great Synaxarion, also mentions that the blind man’s name was Celidonius. Tradition ascribes the founding of the Christian church at Nîmes in Gaul (present-day France) to Saint Celidonius.

The commentary on this gospel text by Saint Macarius the Great expounds on Jesus’ healings as revelation of God’s expansive love for humanity:

“Let us fervently hasten to the inviting Christ, pouring out our hearts before Him. Let us not persistently despair in our salvation, because it is the trick of the evil one to cause us despair by reminding us of our former sins. We must remember that if the Lord, when He came, was a physician and healer of the blind, the crippled, and the deaf, and that He even resurrected the dead, He will also heal the blindness of the mind, the weakness of the soul, and the deafness of the negligent heart. There is no other who created both body and soul. And, if God is so merciful and gracious to those who transgressed and died, then will not that same one who so intensely loves humanity also heal the tainted immortal souls of those ask?”

May our most gracious and merciful Lord, Physician of both soul and body, grant health and healing to all who ask, through the intercessions of Saint Celedonius and all of the saints. Amen!

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