The Scripture readings of Friday of the First Week of Advent (Isaiah 29:17-24; Matthew 9:27-31) are about healing. The First Reading (Isaiah 29:17-24) is about God’s promise to heal Jerusalem’s blindness, God’s redeeming plan for Jerusalem from her blindness to pride, though God prophesized against and rebuked it (Isaiah 29:1-16). The Gospel Reading (Matthew 9:27-31) is about Jesus healing two blind men in response to their petition for healing.
Reading these scripture texts during Advent reminds us that we are preparing ourselves to receive healing and restoration from the one who is coming, the Christ. As He had promised to heal Jerusalem’s blindness to pride and protect her well-being, as Isaiah put it poetically (Isaiah 29:17-24; cf. Isaiah 35:1-10), God has promised us to intervene our blindness and other brokenness in our lives. In order to fulfill this promise of His to us, God is sending His only begotten Son, the Christ. Then, as addressed in the Gospel Reading (Matthew 9:27-31), the Christ, the Son of God, will heal our blindness so that we can see the truth.
Unless our blindness is removed, unless we are redeemed out of the darkness of our blindness, we cannot see the truth. If we remain in the darkness due to blindness, then, we would repeat a cycle of our sin all the way down to complete self-destruction. But, loving and merciful God will not let this happen. So, He intervenes by sending His only begotten Son, Christ (1 John 4:9). And he is on his way to us to redeem us from the darkness of our blindness.
As Christ draws nearer to us in his coming, we shall see a great light and greet this light with joy (i.e. Isaiah 9:1-2). The great light is the Christ, as he is the light of the world (John 8:12). This means that we need to work on healing our blindness so that we may recognize the Christ the light as his coming becomes imminent.
Though cannot heal our blindness completely on our own efforts, we certainly can lessen the burden of the blindness through our vigilance in other senses. Perhaps, that was how the two blind men recognize the presence of Christ in their vicinity and were able to cry out to him (Matthew 9:27-28) and were able to let Christ open their eyes according to their faith (Matthew 9:29).
We have been blind in many ways, because we do not see the whole truth. This is why we go through a cycle of sin. And this cycle of sin that we have been going through for generations is like the samsara in Buddhism, keeping us in perpetual suffering and unhappiness.
Human efforts alone cannot overcome this problem. Only God’s redemptive ans salvific intervention can. That is why God the Father is sending His Son, who is consubstantial with Him (i.e. John 10:30, 38), because רֹפְאֶֽךָ׃ יְהוָ֖ה (Yahweh raphaeka), God heals (Exodus 16:26).
We are called to be good stewards of the Creation on behalf of God the Creator, as we are made in His triune image (Genesis 1:26-28). However, the Creation has been losing its original order, as it has been wounded and suffering. To a significant extent, we are the ones destroying the Creation for our relentless pursuit of material gain and convenience under the banner of “civilization” and “industrialization”.
Though God equipped His Creation with its abilities to repair and restore itself, damages we have been inflicting on the Creations, especially since industrial revolution, outpaces the Creation’s self-restoration capacities. The accumulation of unrestored and unrepaired damages of the Creation are doomed to bring catastrophic consequences. As a matter of fact, we have been already experiencing an increasing number of disasters due to the human-made disorders of the Creation.
In response, many scientists and ecologically conscious people have been calling our attention to this problem and developing practical strategies to reverse this trend of destruction. And Pope Francis promulgated his encyclical, “Laudato Si”, in light of St. Francis of Assisi’s praise to God for His Creation, call our attention to care for the Creation. Nevertheless, many of us are still blind to this problem and deaf to the prophetic voices of concerned scientists, ecologically-minded people, and Pope.
This current situation of us in regard to the brewing crisis of the Creation makes a striking comparing parallel to the blindness of Jerusalem to its perversity due to pride, as addressed in Isaiah 29:1-16. Jerusalem was blind to God’s greatness, thus, only paid its lip service to Him (Isaiah 29:13-16). In response to this problem, God promised to heal Jerusalem and redeem her from blindness, hoping that her sight would keep her from sinning.
Now, we are about to receive God’s intervention by way of receiving Christ, who is on his way to us. Then, we shall be healed and redeemed from the darkness of our blindness so that we will be delivered from the samsara-like vicious cycle of sin. We will be better stewards of God’s Creation, taking care of it toward its restoration through our obedience to God. Our health and happiness are hinged upon this.
Christ cares about the wellbeing of the Creation because:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-17).
Therefore, he will not keep us blind to the truth and let us repent sin to keep the Creation disordered.
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