Homily of Selim Sfeir, Maronite Archbishop of Cyprus, April 6, 2025
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
“O Light from Light, true God from true God, on this day, make us worthy to meditate on the miracle when you opened the eyes of the blind man on the road to Jericho.” - Opening Prayer
Our Maronite Liturgy teaches us that even to meditate, to think over, the passage of today’s gospel is a grace that we must ask God for. We know from bitter experience how easy it is to pass over the grandeur of God’s works, blinded by our distractions. Yes, Lord, make us worthy … or at least a little less unworthy!
I would like to meditate upon how our Lord, in His Sacred Passion, which we will commemorate in just a few days, became blind for us. By his complete and total obedience to the will of His Father, submitting to the exquisite cruelty of his Passion and Death, our Lord became the incarnation of blind obedience. The very term ‘blind obedience’ rouses within us fallen children of Adam such outrage, that we immediately wish to denounce it as unworthy of the dignity of the human person.
Yet Christ, in His Sacred Passion, relinquished the light of his intellect, closing his eyes to his own personal judgement, even though it was perfect. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he was given to see the great number of souls who, despite His Sacrifice and Death, would refuse to be washed in His Blood and thus be damned for all eternity. It is only natural that His Human Nature would recoil before all of this. In the complete obscurity of His obedience, He submits, “Father, not my will, by Thy will be done.
By His obedience, He merited for each soul the grace of light; the light to know oneself, the light to repent, and the light to be baptized.
From the perfect obedience of the Son, and his willingness to be blind to his natural instincts of preservation and survival, we have been given the greatest gift, salvation through Christ.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #614
The sacrifice of Christ is unique; it completes and surpasses all other sacrifices. First, it is a gift from God the Father himself, for the Father handed his Son over to sinners in order to reconcile us with himself. At the same time, it is the offering of the Son of God made man, who in freedom and love offered his life to his Father through the Holy Spirit in reparation for our disobedience.
† Selim Sfeir
Maronite Archbishop of Cyprus