Seeing Through the Eyes of Faith
Father Bob’s Homily — Laetare Sunday March 15
One of the great moral and spiritual problems of our day is that people do not see reality for what it is.
In the Gospel tonight, Jesus says to those who believe they see clearly:
“You say you see, but your sin remains.”
Or to put it another way:
“You think you see, and your blindness remains.”
But not so for the man born blind.
Jesus comes to him as the light of the world. Jesus restores his physical sight, and he is now able to see reality in a whole new way through faith in Jesus Christ.
Seeing reality through the eyes of faith in Jesus Christ is a fundamental part of our vocation — our call to holiness. It defines how we are to see the world: through the eyes of faith.
If we think that this is just poetic talk or some kind of abstract thinking, all we need to do is look at salvation history and see how hard God has worked throughout human history to present to us — and call us — to see the world through the eyes of faith.
Go back to the Bronze Age, about 3,500 years ago, to around the year 1500 BC, when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments for the Israelites.
Why did God do that?
To give the Israelites a new reality to live by.
In the Bible, it is called a covenant. We can think of it as a new way of living: a righteous relationship with God and a just relationship with one another.
The Israelites were called to see this new reality and to live in it by following the Ten Commandments.
God told them:
“If you follow these commandments, it will go well for you. If you do not, it will not go well for you.”
And as we know from reading the Bible, it did not always go well for the Israelites, because they often rejected this new reality.
When they rejected it, they were unfaithful to God.
So God sent the prophets — men called to remind the people to return to the covenant and to live again in that right relationship with God.
Then Jesus came on the scene.
Jesus — God incarnate, God with us — gave His disciples and followers a new reality.
What was that new reality?
It was the Kingdom of God.
A kingdom with new rules, new commandments, and new ways of living — including Jesus’ law of love:
- Love your enemies
- Forgive others
- Practice radical humility
- Learn to suffer well
- Live the Beatitudes
- Perform the corporal works of mercy
This was the new covenant the disciples were called to live in.
And they did.
After Pentecost they became apostles, and they went out into the Roman Empire sharing our Lord’s vision — His kingdom vision for the world.
In sharing that vision, eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred.
After the apostles came the Church Fathers, the martyrs, and the saints of the Church. They understood this new reality — this covenant — and they saw the world through the eyes of faith.
Because they saw the world through the eyes of faith in Jesus Christ, they were able to do wonderful, beautiful, powerful, and unique things.
Just look at the lives of the saints.
From the very beginning we see that God has taken great pains to give us this beautiful reality in which to live.
Just as He gave the Israelites a new reality so they would grow into a holy nation and reflect God’s glory to the world, so too this is part of our vocation.
We are called to live in our Lord’s grace and friendship, to see the world through the eyes of faith, so that Christ becomes our way, our truth, and our life.
When we grow in friendship with Him, we begin to reflect God’s glory to the rest of the world.
This is not complicated.
But it begins with our worldview — our vision.
Do we understand that this is our call?
Not to live in the darkness of sin that can so easily blind us, but to look to Jesus as our way, our truth, and our life, so that we may share His vision for the world.
Today we celebrate Laetare Sunday, which means to rejoice.
So let us praise the Lord.
For Jesus is our way, our truth, and our life.
Let us ask the Lord to help us not only see this, but also to understand it and to live it in our everyday lives.
Let us pray that the Lord will grant us 20/20 spiritual vision so that we may navigate His kingdom here on earth.
And in the end, by the grace of His Word and Sacrament, may we always be protected from the blindness that comes from sin.
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