Healing of the Blind Man
Duccio di Buoninsegna
1308-11
Tempera on wood, 43 x 45 cm
National Gallery, London
February 19, 2014
Jesus always shows compassion on the sick and has done countless miracles, healing them of their diseases. In today’s Gospel, he again is moved with pity on a blind man. He performs this miracle outside the village, away from the crowd, so as not to attract attention to himself, not to be admired, not to be glorified by the people. But Christ performs a miracle to increase the faith of the people especially of the person who receives the healing.
Do not think that Christ came mainly to heal our illnesses. Often, he does heal us when we are sick but this is only a sign of the power he has over any kind of evil. For there is a more serious illness than that of the body and that is the illness of the spirit, meaning sin. We are all quick to ask Christ to heal us when we are physically ill, but we rarely ask him to heal us of our sinfulness. Maybe we are comfortable with our sins and do not seriously want to change. But if we do want healing, we need only to approach Christ and beg for his healing.
It is interesting to note that Christ uses his spittle in this healing. The spittle comes from the mouth where speech comes from, where the word comes from. Today, Jesus heals our wounds of sin with his Word. That is why it is so vital for us to listen to his Word when it is proclaimed. Listening to Christ’s Word has the power to heal us.
In several of his healings, Christ touches the sick. We may think that it would have been amazing if we had lived in Christ’s time so we could touch him physically, but this does not have to be. We are in fact more fortunate than those who actually saw Christ because now we do not need to touch him physically to be healed. As long as we have faith in Christ, we are already touching him. Let us allow him to hold our hand as he did with this blind man and lead us to salvation from our sins.