NOTES for Mat 20:29-34
"Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and behold, darkness - for brightness, and we walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall and, like people without eyes, we feel our way; we stumble at noon as at twilight, among the living like the dead. We all growl like bears and sigh like doves; we wait for justice, and there is none [of it] - for salvation, but it is far from us" (Isa 59:9-11).
We must always remember that everything that happens in the Gospel has multiple layers of meaning, and those layers do not contradict one another at all, as some, even modern exegetes, sometimes suppose. Today's passage about the healing of the two blind men is no exception. On the one hand, there is the direct, real, living meaning of what happened. But precisely because it is direct, it often turns out to be alien to us. Well, He healed them; but what is that to me if my beloved, wonderful grandmother, sick with retinal dystrophy, is slowly but inevitably sliding toward complete loss of vision, and nothing can help her, no matter how hard the doctors try?
This is the age-old problem with the direct meaning, which would seem to be the simplest, but turns out to be beyond people, becomes a stumbling block for them, and becomes the reason they leave God. But in fact it is much easier to begin by looking for more complex, indirect paths of interpretation, paradoxical as that is. And such a spiritual interpretation of this passage can be seen in Isaiah's prophecy. Let us repeat that both interpretations are valuable, but the second is easier to understand and accept, while the first is harder. For someone, of course, the opposite may be true; and in any case, once one interpretation has been understood, one cannot rest content with it. So then, our life far from God is not life in darkness, no, because the Light shines everywhere, but we do not see Him because we are blind. "We stumble at noon," Isaiah writes, and here this sounds especially clear: even when the Lord pours the maximum light upon us, we do not see Him.
Let us think about ourselves. Even when grace is given to us so generously, we manage to fall into small sins, or even into real sins. But if these sorrow-filled words of Isaiah apply to us, then his next words, full of joy, also apply to us.
"I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness, and I will hold You by the hand and keep You, and I will give You as a covenant for the people, as a light for the nations, to open blind eyes, to bring prisoners out of confinement and those sitting in darkness out of the dungeon." (Isa 42:6,7)
The prophecy has been fulfilled. But this news has not yet reached all the ends of the world, the boundless world of our unfortunate blinded souls.