NOTES for Mar 8:22-26

When healing the blind man, the Lord does everything possible to keep it from becoming known. He often commands those He has healed to tell no one, but today He even leads this blind man out of the village and, after healing him, sends him home, expressly forbidding him to enter it. This is an exceptionally important “guideline” from Christ for us. By acting in this way, He gives us the opportunity to believe in Him without self-interest.

Miracles captivate us and sometimes strengthen those of little faith. But when we witness them, we seek God's involvement in our problems instead of entering His Kingdom ourselves. We understand many things, miracles included, in a very anthropocentric way. For our weak souls they become a kind of drug, and our faith grows increasingly dependent on receiving its indispensable dose. The Lord frees us from precisely this by performing most miracles in secret.

Christ's command that the healed man go straight home without visiting those who had brought him to Him may be compared with the Evangelist John's remark that the Samaritans believed in Jesus “no longer because of what” the woman who met Him at the well had said, but because they had “heard for themselves and knew that He is the Christ.” Learning of God's great and glorious works from others is good and useful, but, as people say nowadays, “that is not the main thing.” The main thing is to meet Him ourselves.