Monday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 15, 2021
The Feast of St. Albert the Great
Luke 18:35-43
As Jesus approached Jericho a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging, and hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” He shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” The people walking in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent, but he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!” Then Jesus stopped and ordered that he be brought to him; and when he came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He replied, “Lord, please let me see.” Jesus told him, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.” He immediately received his sight and followed him, giving glory to God. When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God.
The link for the online Bible Study on Monday night, 7:00 PM Central Time, 8:00 PM Eastern time, is:
The Church Fathers often interpreted the Gospel accounts of the Lord Jesus giving sight to the blind as him healing spiritual blindness. According to St. Albert the Great, whose feast is celebrated today, there are six causes of spiritual blindness: the desire for temporal goods; the folly of vainglory and boasting; lust; excessive wrath; the empty joy of the world; and self-satisfaction.
The desire for temporal goods blinds us because we take our eyes off God, heaven, and grace in order to pursue that which can never make us happy. And the more things we have, the more things we want. Besides this we are beset with the constant fear of losing our things either to nature or to other people. To overcome this, we heed the Lord’s counsel: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through, and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal” (Matthew 6:19–20).
The folly of vainglory causes a distorted, fun-house mirror, understanding of ourselves. We exaggerate to ourselves and others the greatness, as we perceive it, of our family heritage, our education, our career, and things of this kind. On the other hand, we denigrate that of other people. To overcome this blindness, we attend to the Lord’s words, “If any man desire to be first, he shall be the last of all and be minister of all” (Mark 9, 34).
Lust is a particularly vile cause of spiritual blindness. St. Albert says quotes
Revelation 3, 16 in talking about it: “But because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.” He interprets “cold” as chaste and “hot” as charitable, but “lukewarm” as lust. St. Paul’s word help us out here, in 1 Corinthians 6, 18-20: “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”
When St. Albert speaks about excessive wrath, he gives the example of Saul of Tarsus. In Acts 9, 1-2, we read that, “And Saul, as yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked of him letters to Damascus, to the synagogues: that if he found any men and women of this way, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” His fury lead him to blindness. The Lord appeared to him and struck him blind: “And Saul arose from the ground: and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing” (Acts 9, 8). But later he was healed through the hands of Ananias, who said to him, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus has sent me, he that appeared to you in the way as you came that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9, 17). Wrath brings blindness but faith brings peace.
The empty joy of the world dazzles our eyes so that we cannot see the reality we must all face: death, judgment, and heaven or hell. Albert comments quite soberly, “It is necessary for those who are blinded by the goods of the region of “Jericho”, that is, by the unstable vanities of this world, to look up, that is, to look past these at the eternal suffering and grieving which follows this world. He who dances and plays now, ought to consider this because he will be quickly carried out on a bier to his grave.”
Self-satisfaction or complacency blinds us especially in causing us to think that we are already saints. As Albert remarks: “thinks that all graces should flow to him alone, as though to a "valley" of sanctity. He is deceived in thinking this, and is shown to be truly blind. Those who are pleasing to themselves do not see what they are. They believe that they are good and just, but they are not. It may happen that they may be good and just, but still they do not see what they once were, that they were sinners. David saw immediately what he was, for he said: ‘My sin is always against me’ (Psalm 51, 3). They do not see what they were, for although they may judge that they are not immune from sin, they do not think that they may become sinners. But since an angel sinned in heaven, they can sin while still living in the world.” A consideration of the Parable of the Rich Farmer in Luke 12, 16-21 helps restore us to proper sight.
We ought to pray continually to God for the gift of spiritual sight so that he may ever be in our minds. As Albert concluded his sermon on this Gospel reading, “Therefore, beseech the Lord that we may so merit to be enlightened in this present life as to be admitted into his sight in the future life.”
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