That I may see

Today’s gospel (Luke 18: 35-43) needs hardly any commentary but, like all gospel passages it can be the source of endless reflection. A blind man, hearing of the approach of Jesus the Nazarene, calls for mercy, despite the scolding of his unpleasant neighbours who, one suspects, were clamouring for their own piece of Jesus’ attention. When Jesus responds to him (for He had always been able to hear him), He asks what the man desires. When the man asks for the restoration of his sight, Jesus grants him this blessing instantly. And his neighbours – who moments ago were trying to shut him up – now praise God in their amazement (and no doubt clamour all the more for their own needs).

We sometimes think of such healings only in their positive sense; the outcome of a journey of suffering that now gives way to joy with the healing touch of Jesus. But mark again the man’s words: ‘let me see again’.   This man had been able to see once. That was before he lost that quasi-miraculous sense by which the wide world around us crowds into our tiny heads in visions that fill our minds - sometimes of beauty and wonder, and sometimes of horror and fright. We do not know how he lost his sight, but as with all physical ailments that Jesus cures, we know there is also a spiritual sense to the affliction. Just as leprosy apes sin because it causes loss of feeling and disfigurement, so blindness apes our spiritual condition when we lose the insights that come through Revelation, spiritual vision, and human wisdom.

Spiritual blindness may come from many sources. Sometimes God allows us to walk in darkness because He is inviting us to put a greater trust in Him. Often enough, however, spiritual blindness comes from our refusal to see things as they are. Just as we should surrender to the Father’s forming action, we must take stock of things as God’s action allows them to be, and not as we wished they were.

I wonder if there are two dangers for us here: first, that we are sometimes so confident in our ‘insights’ that we miss the truth of things; and second, that we are so frightened by what we see that we prefer to stick our heads in the ground. The first is blindness through pride; the second is blindness through wishful thinking.

In both instances, what we need is the healing word of Jesus, either to remind us of our dependence on Him (and so to ratchet down our self-sufficient attempts at wisdom), or to encourage us to look at reality and speak as we find it (and so to fill our wills with the resolve He designed us to live by).

May Jesus grant us all the humility to depend on His sight, and the courage to speak the truth He gives us to see.

*******

Please remember Brian and Lizzie in your prayers today on their thirteenth wedding anniversary. 

Today is also the anniversary of the beatification of some of the Mexican Martyrs. Viva Cristo rey! 

Watch, forgive and believe

 Today’s gospel (Luke 17: 1-6) is another of those passages where Jesus gives a series of counsels that complement each other. Today, it is: watch, forgive, and believe!

We watch when we are responsible and live our responsibility fully, especially towards those who depend on us. Jesus is so firm on this point that we get a glimpse of the divine chastisement reserved for those who lead astray the young – better a millstone round his neck. No mercy for them? Well, this warning is God’s mercy. Know the cost of not being responsible. Know the cost of selling out to your worst self.

It is striking then that the next counsel is for mercy: mercy towards your brother who offends you. What these two counsels hold in common is that we must try to put the other first: do our duty towards others (watch!) but forgive them if they do not do their duty towards us. How different would things be if we all acted responsibly as our brother’s keeper and forgave our brothers and sisters when they failed to do us the same courtesy. And courtesy is the right word here because courtesy is the crown of charity and love. Courtesy is the tribute that respect pays to love.

And then comes the final counsel for today: believe! For if we believed as we should and as we are called to be, we would command the elements. The curious thing here is: if we believed with such vehemence, why would we exercise that virtue in such a self-agrandizing way? (“I believe so much, I can rip up this tree by the power of my faith!”) Jesus is again here at His most rabbinical; I image this is a line said with a Nazarene twinkle in the eye and an ironic curl of the lip that fully implies He knows such an act would be the kind of thing His flesh-obsessed disciples would count as impressive!   

In fact, if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we would almost certainly not exercise it in any way other than to honour God by being responsible and forgiving our neighbour. Our faith would know the right measure (and I'm sure it would not involve destruction of the flora!).

Watch, forgive, and believe, therefore. And, in these counsels we will find we are saying ‘yes’ to the Lord in every moment.

On astute parables

 Most of the time, the gospel teaches us the doctrines and moral truths that belong to Divine Revelation. But sometimes, the gospel teaches us other things besides. Today's gospel (Luke 16: 1-8) is a good example of this.

On the surface of it, if we were drawing up a league table of Jesus’ best parables, I'm afraid to say this parable would probably come close to the bottom if we judged it by what the lectionary has served up for us here. The lesson of the parable appears to be that the children of this world are cleverer in their own business than the children of light. In fact, the parable’s complete meaning does not become apparent until we read the following section of the gospel where Jesus warns us that we cannot be the servant of God and the servant of money. Even then, the parable seems confusing, especially given that the rich master ends up praising his dishonest servant.

So, when it comes to reading such a parable, what should we do? Here is where I think the gospel teaches us other things indirectly. We cannot understand this gospel if we simply stop at the level of its words. In order to understand this gospel, we have to be able to think about the wider context in which Jesus is speaking. Moreover, this is true of other things that people might say to us in other circumstances in our lives. As I often say to my wife, it's not about what it's about.

There is a very simple way to understand this. If I sit down at the table and say, “Where’s my supper?” my question is not simply begging to know the location of my food; I am asking to be fed. If, when I am served my supper, I then say, “Is there any salt?”, my question is not trying to ascertain whether there is salt in the house. I am asking for someone to pass me the salt. My words are not about what they appear to be about on the surface. In how many other circumstances is this the case!

So, why is any of this important? It is important precisely because the children of this world - who understand such things - are cleverer in their day than the children of light. While the children of light attribute the best of motives to their neighbour,  goodwill to all and rose-tinted blessings all round, the children of this world know that much of this world's affairs, even among the children of light, are woven from deceit.

While this gospel’s parable will eventually warn us not to be the servants of money, indirectly it is training us to look below the surface of what people say. It is training us not to be content with being superficial in how we understand what is said to us. It is urging us to understand and to practise the difference between being simple and being simplistic. It is begging us to grasp the difference between confidence and caution. It is asking us to confront in the end the truth about ourselves and the truth about others while we hold to the truth about our loving Father. The Father of Truth, not the father of lies.

The children of this world are more astute in their dealings than the children of light. And let us not forget: this reflects badly - very badly - on the children of light.

Sharing like the Father

 Today’s gospel (Luke 14: 12-14)  is one of those nuggets of Jesus’ wisdom which have the potential to echo in all kinds of circumstances. On the surface, it is about the motives for giving a dinner. “Don’t invite those who can invite you back,” he tells the leading Pharisees.  Don’t just do the socially acceptable thing, or -  worse still - don’t just play your part in the social round of getting and spending, darling.

Yet this logic should exist in other areas of our life. It is not just about the giving of concrete things (like fine dinners) but also about more intangible things like respect, esteem or even friendliness. How easy it is only to pay these things out to those who return them to us. How easy and yet how purely contractual. Hilaire Belloc, who was famously cantankerous, wrote, nevertheless, about courtesy as the crown and sign of love. And if we are called to love our neighbour, whoever they may be, then might we not be called to pay them our respect and courtesy, regardless of whether they pay it back to us? And if we could manage this, would our neighbour then perhaps meet in us the “Word made flesh in Mary”, as we pray after Holy Communion?

There is, nevertheless, one further reason underpinning Jesus’ counsel to the Pharisee in today’s gospel. When we give to those who do not or cannot give to us, and when we show courtesy and love to those who show none to us, we have stepped outside of the human logic of contract and exchange and adopted God’s logic of gift and self-giving. In St Matthew’s gospel, Jesus commands us: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The essence of goodness is to give of itself. Good wishes to share itself. Sometimes, the only way goodness can conquer is through that self-sharing.

There is no imbalance ultimately, Jesus tells us. God will settle all accounts; there is yet abundance in heaven for those who sowed here on earth and received nothing. In the meanwhile, we only need share ourselves – by His grace and depending on His power -  like He shares Himself with us.

Longing like Christ

 Today’s reading (Romans 9: 1-5) gives expression to a sentiment that is increasingly rare: a deeply felt solicitude and concern for the salvation of souls (in this case, Paul’s fellow Jews). St Paul’s words are almost confessional in this passage from his great Letter to the Romans: “my sorrow is so great, my mental anguish so endless”. These are powerful feelings indeed. After all, this is the same St Paul who can do all things in Christ who strengthens him, so what is the source of his acute sorrow? How can this man who lives so deeply in Christ feel like this?

St Paul avoids saying it explicitly, but he announces it indirectly and paradoxically: “I would willingly be condemned and be cut off from Christ if it could help my brothers of Israel”.  The source of his anguish is the separation of the Jews from Christ. And yet, these words too are paradoxical, for how could St Paul feel like this unless he were deeply united to Christ and wished to remain so; unless Christ lived in him?

We hear echoes – or see a foreshadowing -  of these words in Jesus’ own sentiments as He sat with the disciples looking upon the temple. On that occasion, he blurted out these surprising words:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing (Matthew 23: 37).

The sorrow and mental anguish of St Paul is not his at all but Christ’s. The longing of St Paul is a sharing in the deeper, passionate longing of Jesus to recover His chosen people.

And yet, by corollary, we can say that this passion extends also to us and especially to those who are not part of the Mystical Body or whose union with it is imperfect. Only union with Jesus can bring us to the Father’s house. And while there are ways in which that union through grace can come about outside the visible confines of the communion of the Church, the only proper attitude to separation is this anguish of Jesus that is echoed by St Paul.

If everyone is going to heaven in the end, then such anguish would be pointless. That said, when did we last sound like St Paul – when did we last feel like St Paul – with regard to his Jewish brethren or those we are separated from?

Like St Paul, in the end we should long to be dissolved and to be with Christ. And we should long to see others longing for the same blessed end.