QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY

Short Sermons On The Gospels
by Rev F. Peppert
(Joseph F. Wagner. New York. 1914)
Nihil Obstat: Remegius Lafort DD., Censor
Imprimatur: John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
New York, August 12, 1914

A blind man sat by the wayside begging,
St. Luke 18: 35.

St. Gregory tells us that we ought to consider our Saviour's miracles, not only so as to acquiesce in the truth of the facts recorded, but also so as to regard them as types of other higher truths.

Thus in to-day's gospel we think with admiration of our Lord's mercy and power in restoring sight to the blind man, but at the same time we learn to regard the man suffering from physical blindness as a type warning us against spiritual blindness. The gospel teaches us to avoid the latter, since it makes us incapable of seeing what tends to our eternal salvation, blind to the guidance of those desirous of helping us, blind to everything that does not flatter our own self will and sensual inclinations, blind to the truth, to duty and to heaven.

"A blind man sat by the wayside begging."

All theologians refer these words to the misery of spiritual blindness; especially St. Francis of Sales has chosen these words as representing vividly the intense wretchedness of a spiritually blind soul. A blind man is in a pitiable state; he sees none of the natural objects around him; sky and earth are adorned with all God's wonderful works, but he cannot see them, cannot, like those who have sight, be roused to admiration and delight by the contemplation of their beauty.

When Tobias became blind, he described his sad condition in words that call forth our sympathy, saying: "What manner of joy shall be to me, who sit in darkness and see not the light of heaven?" This literal blindness typifies spiritual blindness and ignorance. The most important truths concerning our salvation are concealed from one who is spiritually blind, and he understands nothing of them. "Blind men of this sort," says an old author, "do not see God above them who will judge them, nor Satan before them, who will drag them down, nor death behind following them, nor hell below awaiting them."

Be grateful for the opportunities given you by God in His goodness, of raising the eye of your minds straight to the light of the true faith, the knowledge of what conduces to your salvation. Pray that God may enlighten your hearts and minds more and more with His light; beg Him never to let your hearts grow blind to faith, hope and charity. The blind will never see Jesus, and it is only if, by no fault of our own, we have passed our lives here in blindness, that we shall nevertheless behold Him in everlasting light.

A blind man sat by the wayside. The fact that he sat indicates the inability of the spiritually blind to do anything meritorious. "What else could he do?" says St. Francis of Sales, "or where should he go? He had no alternative but to sit idle, dirty, despised and a burden to himself. In the same way the spiritually blind are devoid of good works and are habitually entangled in sins, laden like prisoners with fetters." The Christian who has faith and spiritual sight, who looks up to Jesus and makes good use of every hour of his life, striving to do everything for love of God, stamps all his works, even the most trivial, with the mark of merit, but the spiritually blind man wastes his time, doing nothing to secure his salvation, for what he does is done merely from some worldly motive, and not through faith and love of God, and therefore it gives him no claim upon heaven. At the end of his life he might as well have done nothing; he is like the servant who buried his talent in the earth and won no merit, hence, when he dies, he appears before his Judge empty-handed.

Let the love of God guide you in all your works, for it is the light without which we can earn no merit for eternity. As St. Paul says in to-day's epistle: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Cor. 8: 1).

Nothing is of any good unless we love God. Say often in your hearts: "All for love of Thee, O God!"

The blind man sat by the wayside. Jesus said: "I am the way," but the spiritually blind man is on a different road from that indicated by our Lord, for he is in unbelief or sin, and sits by the way on which the fleeting things of earth appear of the utmost importance. In the Book of Wisdom we have a description of the spiritually blind who lament saying: "We have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us. We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the way of the Lord we have not known" (v. 6 – 7). May you never have cause to utter such a lamentation! Avoid the first step off the path of faith and goodness. The hour when a man in his blindness turns away from Jesus is the saddest in all his life. In vain does he deceive himself, thinking: "I shall soon come back; I am taking only a little step." At the very beginning of the wrong path a sort of glamour lays hold upon us, leading us further and further astray. Our feet are entangled in cunningly laid snares, and it is only when the evil one is practically sure of his prey that the fascination vanishes, and all the attractive things around us are revealed in their true colours, all the friendly faces appear to be hideous masks, and the garlands adorning the paths of sin prove to be scourges.

The right way is far distant, scarcely visible though bright and clean, and the wanderer thinks it a hopeless undertaking to return to it. Whence shall a soul, weakened by sin, derive courage enough to find it? She has for a long time in her folly rejected the grace of God; — will she now have confidence enough to rely upon this grace? Above all things fear the first step on the wrong road.

A blind man sat by the wayside begging.

St. Francis of Sales remarks that blind people are generally so situated that they are poor and forced to ask alms of others. The spiritually blind, however, are weighed down by much more distressing poverty, and we may apply to them what St. John says in the Apocalypse: "Thou sayest: 'I am rich and made wealthy and have need of nothing,' and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable and poor and blind and naked" (3: 17). If you give yourselves up to unbelief and sin, you may possess all the riches in the world, and still be poor and worthy of pity. He alone is rich whose heart is rich; and the man who is spiritually blind is poor; his soul is poor in God's grace; his imagination is poor in thoughts of a glorious future; his memory is poor in the remembrance of good works; his will is poor in good resolutions to do right; and his heart is poor in Divine love and heavenly comfort.

He begs the world for true peace of heart, and the world passes him by, flinging him some paltry alms; worldly pleasures go by, giving him perhaps a fleeting hour of amusement; worldly honors go by, and give him money that satisfies the eyes, but not the heart. Now and then the blind man is happy, but, just as the little coins flung to a beggar are soon spent, so the trifling joys afforded by earth may for a moment deaden the pain of his heart, but can never give it lasting peace.

Peace will come only when he cries: "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me." Therefore, do you also cry earnestly: "Jesus, Son of David, Light of the World, I will be faithful to Thee until death, may I never lose my sight, and never live in such a way as that the sorrowful words: 'A blind man sat by the wayside begging,' may be applicable to me." Amen.