A Concord Pastor Comments: Homily for October 25

Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Scriptures for today's Mass)

Audio for homily

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I’m going to ask us to imagine something
that I know is far beyond our imagination.
But let’s try anyway.

I’m going to ask us to imagine seeing – as God sees.

This means we have to try to imagine seeing everything,
missing nothing – and trying seeing everything for all eternity,
seeing all that was, that is and that will be.

This means we have to try to imagine seeing
with a kind of X-ray vision:
seeing into everything, seeing through everything
and seeing beyond everything.

This means we have to try to imagine
seeing everything just as it is:
not as we’d like it to be or wish it to be or even pray for it to be
– but just as it is.

To see as God sees would mean to see everything and everyone
with understanding, compassion, justice, mercy and love.

As you can – see –
it’s impossible even to imagine seeing as God sees.
But that often doesn’t stop us from thinking
that we see as God sees,
from thinking that what we see is, indeed, what is;
that what we see is the whole of what’s to be seen;
that each of us sees, as God sees,
with understanding, compassion, justice, mercy and love.

But these are not the eyes with which you and I see.

So it’s important
to regularly have our spiritual eyesight examined and to ask:
- With whose eyes do I see, do I observe, my own life
and the lives of those around me?

- With whose eyes do I discern the difference between
true and false? good and evil? between the real and fantasy?

- Through whose eyes
do I make my most important decisions and choices ?

- With whose eyes do I see my own troubles? my family’s troubles?
my neighbor’s troubles? the world’s troubles?

- Through whose eyes do I observe and evaluate and judge
the words and deeds of others?

- Do I try to see the lives of others as God sees them?

- Do I try to see my own life as God sees my life?

- Do I try to see through the eyes of God’s wisdom
or am I content to see life through the media’s eyes?

- Do I have a desire to see through the eyes of God’s compassion
when I consider those who are in need?

- How would my life be different, today,
if I began, if I even tried to begin, to see as God sees…

It’s not easy to acknowledge that our own eyes might lie to us,
so much is our vision filtered through our needs, our desires,
our emotions and prejudices.

My vision is very much in need of corrective lenses,
not the trifocals I wear but the corrective lenses of
God’s word, the Church’s wisdom,
and a truth greater than my own.

Our culture supports the notion
that each individual’s sight is infallible,
that whatever anyone of us perceives to be true -- is true.
It’s a danger for us all when such a point of view threatens
good order with chaos
and us with a blindness darkness we fail to see.

Bartimaeus, the blind man in today’s gospel,
tells Jesus that all he wants is to be able to see.
Might that be our prayer today?
Lord, that we might see!
Lord, that we might begin to see,
that we might see more and more – as you see…

If we can begin to see, even a little, as God sees
we’ll begin to see beyond the appearance of things
and into the heart of God, of our neighbor and our selves.

We need to refract what we see through the prism of God’s word
and allow our vision to be colored
with the wisdom of tradition and truth.
And therein lies the healing of that common blindness
we often fail to – see - in ourselves.

Pray that through God’s eyes, today, we will see at this table
our bread become the Body of Christ,
our wine become his Blood, and how, in the sacrament of this altar,
and ourselves become one in Christ
– in the heart and in the eyes of God.