THE LIFE-GIVING RIVER THAT COMES FORTH FROM GOD AND LEADS TO GOD

                The Gospel tells us that the man followed the Lord Jesus, after being healed of his blindness.  By recording this detail, the Holy Spirit gives us an image of the work of Christ in all of Creation.  When we see the Lord in the four gospels, we see Him as man. It is true that He shows forth miraculous powers, but we see Him from the vantage point of His human nature.  It is certain that the people of that age saw Him as a human being, and experienced Him as a human being.  It is only the Gospel of St. John, and there only a few chapters, which declare directly and forcefully the divinity of the Lord Jesus and the depth of meaning that it has.

                As we read the gospels, and especially this passage, which is given to us today, we need to bear in mind that the Lord Jesus is the Logos, the Word of God.  He is the principle of intelligibility, and the basis of all being.  In creation, it was the Logos, who engendered the logoi, the forms of all things.  It is not so much that the Lord God created specific oak trees, the first generation of oak trees.  No, He created the logos (form) of oak tree, and, in this way, He is directly responsibility for the creation not only of the first generation of oak trees, but for every oak tree ever after even to the end of time.  All of the logoi participate in the Logos, Who is pattern and form for all of them.  The logoi of all things are supposed to raise our minds to the Logos.  In other words, the entire Creation is supposed to be like a great river in which everything flows toward God the Logos. 

                Nevertheless, Creation is damaged by sin.  Sin is associated with crime and guilt, but the word that is used in all the writings of the New Testament is hamartia, which means to miss the mark.  God is the mark to which all things aim, but through sin, we misuse the things of Creation, and the logoi (forms) of various things become ends in themselves, rather than being a means to communion with God.  Instead of following the river of being that naturally flows toward God, we create stagnate pools, separate from the life-giving river in which we wallow in the enjoyment of things cut off from their meaning. We mistake the ends of things, taking them as ends in themselves.  This is hamartia.  We aim at the true meaning and end of things, but we miss.

                Many of the Fathers describe the Logos’ mission in the world as the gathering of the logoi.  The Logos became incarnate as our Lord Jesus Christ, in order to gather the logoi, the forms of things into their proper orientation.  The Lord Jesus came to gather all things back into the life-giving river that comes forth from God and leads to God.  We saw an illustration of this in the Gospel today.  The Lord Jesus restores the sight of the blind man, he receives his sight, and immediately follows the Lord Jesus on the road.  In the same way, the Lord Jesus heals our sin, our hamartia, and we receive a new orientation toward God the Logos, the beginning and the end of all things.