Seen any good
movies lately? Our readings today are
about sight. About seeing. They raise the question, “What do you
see?” This is an important question
because what you see determines what you understand, and judge, and so what you
do.
Not everyone
sees the same thing. We heard in the
first reading: “Not as man sees does God
see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.”
To be able to
see only the appearance – only the outward manifestation of something, only the
physical appearance of something or someone, is to have a kind of
blindness. It is to grope around in the
dark – seeing only the surface of things and not penetrating into the reasons
for why things are the way they are, and so to fail to truly understand. It is to lack wisdom, or in other words, to
be foolish.
Physical sight
is wonderful, but it gives us only the plain physical appearance of
things. To go deeper, to penetrate and
understand the whys, the meanings, the importance of others, we need a
different kind of sight, a spiritual insight.
This Jesus gives us.
In the Gospel
He says: “I am the Light of the world.” Jesus does not mean He is physical light,
like what we get from the sun or from a light-bulb. Rather Jesus is the source of spiritual light
– letting us see more deeply into the reality of things, into our own life
experience, and so to understand more fully the nature of ourselves and others,
their purpose and worth. He gives us
wisdom.
In today’s
world there are people who see only science.
Science is a wonderful adventure, revealing marvelous things about
creation. But no matter how wonderful and marvelous it is, true science
never even attempts to answer why things are the way they are, nor the reason
and purpose of all this wonderful creation.
Like physical sight science can only answer questions in its own realm,
and can never penetrate to explain the meaning and true purpose of something,
and so reveal the things true value and worth.
Science
describes and reveals some truly awe-inspiring phenomena. But science can never explain why these
phemonema elicit awe,
or what the true purpose and meaning of the awe is. Likewise there are many parts of creation
that are hauntingly beautiful. Big sky
Texas sunsets for example. But science
cannot explain why they are beautiful, nor the reason and purpose of such
beauty, nor why beauty haunts us so.
For those kind
of questions we need to see more deeply into realities, and that sight comes
from Christ.
Let me give
you an example: an unplanned pregnancy,
with one set of eyes, can only be seen as at best a bother, and perhaps also an
intolerable burden, and a threat to future dreams, and even to the advancement
of children already born. But with a
deeper insight, life – even when it is a burden – is always seen as a blessing,
something wonderful, always a gift. Two
people look at the same situation and see two radically divergent things. Why? Because one sees only the surface, the other
sees deeply into the nature of the situation.
Or again: someone looks at undocumented workers and
sees illegal aliens, law breakers, an economic threat who are taking jobs of
citizens, a cause of crime and social unrest.
Someone else seeing the same situation with different eyes sees people
struggling to make a better future for their family, sees people with the gumption to risk leaving all
they know and find familiar to try for a better life in a new situation, sees
persons who have basic human rights and who are loved by God as God’s
children. Two people look at the same
situation and see two radically divergent things. Why?
Because one sees only the surface, the other sees deeply into the nature
of the situation.
Jesus is the
one who heals our blindness and helps us to see beyond the surface, to
penetrate deeply into the reality of things.
Then we can see the beauty of creation and know it speaks to us of the
beauty of the Creator. We can not only feel
the awe but see the source of the awe which beckons us to Itself. We can see the dignity, beauty and worth of
our own lives, and of all those around us.
In Christ we begin to truly see.
Only Jesus can
truly, deeply, heal us of blindness.
What do you
see?
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