As often as God heals the desperate afflictions of human bodies, so often He unfolds the power of His deity: but in one and the same infirmity, when He changes the order of His healing, He makes us search out more deeply the reasons for which He does this. For to the blind man sitting by the way He restored sight by a command alone; but to another, born blind from birth—to whom nature had begrudged not the light but darkness, and had itself closed and denied the very eyes which it forms and opens—Christ applies clay and fashions it into a material salve, and He procures, He does not merely cure, eyes (John 9), so that by a creating hand—
not a healing hand—lights might be supplied to the man from that whence He had made the whole man. But this blind man, whose cure the evangelist Mark has related to us, is healed in so novel a manner that he compels all to inquire why so stubborn a blindness presumes thus to make delay for its Author, at whose nod, sight, and command infirmities perish, health returns, life arises, death is ended, all things stand, all things fall away. 'Jesus,' it says, 'came to Bethsaida, and they brought to Him a blind man, and besought Him that He would touch him; and taking the blind man by the hand, He led him forth out of the town' (Mark 8). As though He could not have cured him on the spot, or had need of the benefit of a place, He who bestowed sight on all. This is that Bethsaida whose faithlessness the Lord reproaches, saying:
'Woe to thee, Chorazin, woe to thee, Bethsaida: for if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in thee, they would long ago have done penance in sackcloth and ashes' (Matt. 11). Therefore, taking him by the hand, He leads him out of the house of unbelief, He raises him up from the seat of faithlessness, that He might give faith before eyes, mind before He restored health to the body, and offer the service of human guidance before He should work the mark of divine power. They were asking that He would at least touch him:
but Christ, who knows not to shrink from the poor, who knows how to love the poor, gave the poor man His whole hand, and God offered public service to the weak, that man might not shrink from man, and that one seeing might see one not seeing, and by a guiding hand make the blind man ignorant of the loss of light: lest a man should say, 'My hand has nothing to give the poor,' let him give the poor his very hand, and it will be more to have given the poor a hand than a coin, to have offered the poor a way than to have given the poor a fragment of bread.
'And He led him forth out of the town, and spat upon his eyes.' With the Lord's spittle He fills the empty hollows of the eyes, from His divine mouth He gives light-bearing saliva, that a drop of holy dew might baptize the eyes of the sinner, that pardon might open what fault had closed. Let no one therefore doubt that all mortal members, though wholly dried up, can revive by the divine shower, since he sees that by a little drop of the Lord's spittle eyes parched with blindness are suddenly so awakened into light: 'The dead shall rise,' says Isaiah, 'and they that are in the tombs shall rise again, and they that are in the earth shall rejoice.' How? 'For the dew that is from thee is health to them': what rain is to seed, this is the Lord's shower to those about to rise again. 'And He laid His hands upon him.'
In making, in repairing, in composing man, the Lord's healing hands are ever present to men. 'Thy hands,' he says, 'have made me and fashioned me.' 'And He asked him whether he saw anything.' He asks as man, He works as God. He who sees the hidden things of the earth, who beholds the secrets of the heart, to whom all things are naked that are covered from all, does He in His own work, in His own eyes, seek to see, does He labor to know, does He learn from another's report? Far be it. But He asks that those present might know, that those to come might learn, that the cure of this blindness was not simple but mystical. Finally, while still being cured, to the Lord's questioning he answered that not full light, but a certain dawn and light breaking forth had been given to him: 'I see,' he says, 'men as trees, walking.'
To imperfect eyes shapes grow large, appearances are confounded, the very things are deceived; men who do not yet grasp true vision but still endure only the shadow of vision. And why, then, does he see men as trees, and not as columns or something else, and not standing still but walking? Because after Christ's healing he had seen that men pass through this present age like trees, and do not abide; he presently sees him whom Christ has healed to be, in this life, but a temporal planting of the human seedling. Christ's cure must therefore be renewed, so that perfect eyes may behold things future and sure, things abiding and eternal. 'Again,' it says, 'he laid his hands upon his eyes, and he began to see; and he was restored, so that he saw all things clearly, and he sent him to his own house, saying:'
'Go into thy house; and if thou enter into the town, tell no man.' Let spiritual understanding now be opened, that we may recognize who this blind man is, and why he does not come of his own accord but is led by others, and is guided by Christ's hand, and is brought out beyond the town, and receives sight in another place—he who long among his own had borne the long blindness that was his; and he spat upon his eyes, and the imposition of the divine hand is repeated; and to him to whom it is granted to see outside the house, it is not granted to tell his own people what he saw, how he saw it, or through whom he saw.
Brethren, this blind man is the Jew, who in the Synagogue—that is, in the house of unbelief—and in the town—that is, in the assembly of evildoers—was held in the blindness of ignorance, and sat oppressed. Hence it is that he did not come to Christ, but Christ came to him, and took hold of his hand, that being healed he might glory in the gift of the One who calls, not in the benefit of the Law, nor in his own choosing. He leads him forth outside, that in the Church he may see the light of faith through the liberty of grace—he who under the veil of the Law saw nothing. He first lays his hand upon him, that he may see the shadow of the Law pass away; that he may see the priests, the scribes,
the Pharisees, and the whole figure of Jewish observance passing away like trees, which, as they arise in time, so with time grow old: they are born, grow green, blossom, bear fruit, perish, and vanish away. Again he lays his hand upon him, that rising up he may now see, not things that fall, but things eternal, and may behold whatsoever is of divine light, of honor and of glory: as did that great one among them, Paul, who fell in the way still a Jew, that he might rise a Christian; and he was blinded in the Law, that he might see by grace, as is attested by himself: 'Now we see through a glass and in a dark manner; but then we shall see face to face.'