By Protopresbyter Father George Metallinos
We have spoken before, my beloved Christians, about the arrogant and hypocritical attitude of the Pharisees, i.e. the religious establishment of the time of Christ, towards the God-man. We will return to their gloomy faces, because, in today's Gospel passage, they surpass all precedents of malice and slander against the Lord.
Christ met two blind men, who begged Him to heal them. He looked for traces of their faith in His power, and when He found it, He rewarded that faith and healed them. A little later they brought before Him a man who was deaf and dumb and demon-possessed, whom He also healed. The healing of physical illness, as a fruit of faith in the Divine power, reveals that the renewing and saving power and work of God concerns the whole of human existence, both body and soul. That is why the work of the Church, throughout time, develops in these two important parameters of human life: in the salvation of the soul, first of all, and in the ministry of human needs, afterwards.
Immediately after the healing of these people and the spreading of the wonderful news, the people burst into manifestations of enthusiasm and adoration in the person of Christ, a fact that disturbed and worried the Pharisees who were present, who were constantly looking for ways to destroy and to trap Christ. Their tactics were systematic and basically defensive. Seeing that the activity of Jesus, His preaching and His miracles, gained the trust of the people, they felt that they were losing their popular footing, which endangered their authoritarian arbitrariness. Only, in this case, they surpassed all previous ones. They accused Christ of healing the three who were sick not in the name of God, but in the name of the devil.
Since it was not possible to dispute the self-evident miracle, of which the people themselves were witnesses, they slandered Christ, distorted reality, in order to deconstruct it, identifying Christ with the devil. They aimed to shake the people's confidence in the person of Jesus.
The pharisaical attitude is not inexplicable. The action of the Lord, throughout His life on earth, revealed the demonic nature of Pharisaism, which always wore the cloak of religiosity, with the aim of perpetuating spiritual authority over the people, in a way that did not accept any questioning. Christ came and exposed the Pharisaic hypocrisy, so He must, at all costs, remain silent, after first being slandered.
This pharisaical attitude also does not concern only that time. Unfortunately, it is eternal and repetitive. As long as the Church exists and acts therapeutically in the world and ministers the will of God, Pharisaic forces arise in society - sometimes also in religious circles - which try to deconstruct Her work, especially when they realize that this work gives people rest and warms their spiritual life in the Church.
Let's look at some examples that point out this Pharisaic tactic: "Does one sacrifice everything in our materialistic age to devote one's self to missionary work and Christian witness? He is crazy and a hypocrite. Does one defy everything and, above all, self-interest, in order to fight for the correctness of the faith and the truth of the Gospel? He is fanatical, monolithic and uncompromising. Does anyone dare to ask that the Gospel be the foundation of the so-called Christian society? Does it stir the murky waters of our conventionality and our thoughts? He is an anarchist and a rebel. Is he imprisoned for his Christian witness and suffering? He politicizes and demagogues."
These Pharisaic phenomena of our time reveal, on the one hand, the spiritual poverty and inactivity of their exponents, and on the other, the power of God's presence in the lives of those who accept Him and serve Him. Let us not, my beloved, allow such decadent phenomena of a Pharisaical form dominate the wider space of our Church life. Hypocrisy is a wound for the Church. It is a clear deviation from the authentic Church ethos, whose eternal and safe bearer is Christ Himself. Amen!
Source: From the book Light from Light, p. 87. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.