Seeing with the Eyes of Christ

Reflections from His Eminence Metropolitan Nathanael

on the Sunday of the Blind Man and a Visit to Cook County Jail

As the Church now turns from the celebration of Pascha toward the coming feast of Pentecost, we are reminded that the Resurrection is not merely an event we commemorate, but a new way of seeing the world and one another through the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit.

On the Sunday of the Blind Man, the Church proclaims one of the most beautiful encounters in the Gospel: Christ restoring sight to the man born blind (John 9:1–38).

What is striking in this passage is not only the miracle itself, but the way Jesus looks upon the blind man.

The disciples saw a problem to explain. They asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” They reduced him to his suffering, his condition, and the assumptions they carried about him.

Christ did not.

Jesus saw neither a sinner nor a punishment. Where others saw a problem to judge, Christ saw one of His Father’s children standing before Him. The real blindness in this instance was not…