“Who can know God’s
council or conceive what the Lord intends?” we are asked rather rhetorically in
the first reading.
This is one of those statements that on the surface is a no
brainer, but upon reflection sheds light on all of creation and history.
In God’s boundless creative wisdom he is unknowable.
And in the ordinary human sense, we cannot understand his
workings in the world.
Sometimes we see God’s hand in the grandeur of creation, or
the smile of a child, or in the reading of Salvation History.
We sense God’s intention in the intimate interior of our
prayer, the fleeting movement of his Holy Spirit in our heart, and in the
Church’s sacraments. But, as we are, we
can never really get it, we cannot even see it.
We can only glimpse it as if passing a mirror. And it’s a broken mirror and its true image is distorted by
its fractures.
We get lost in its multifaceted false images of social, cultural
and political agendas and in its shimmering web we lose sight of who we really are
and we lose sight of God. Worse still, sometimes this mirror is so clouded over by our
busy, self-absorbed and forgetful lives that it appears as if God does not
exist at all.
And without God we are left – alone, with only the self and
its ego to shape and give meaning to our lives.
Every choice and every relationship than becomes self-centered
and conditional.
The sad story of the human condition is that this doesn’t
bother us so much. We have built whole societies and cultures around this false
sense of self and the individual. We have even, on the cover of Newsweek, declared God is dead.
Fooled by the distortion we fail to see the danger in this separation
from God because we are fascinated and entranced by the seductive images.
But it is in this very mirror that Jesus finds us and restores
our sight (as he did Bartameaus’ ) and we are given the chance to see with
clear eyes, without the distortion, as
Jesus himself sees. With new eyes we can begin to see God (his council and
intentions). With news eyes we no longer see through the glass darkly but
in the light of clarity and truth.
It’s all about the vantage point. It’s all about point of view. And this gets us to the Gospel.
Great crowds were with Jesus. Like most great crowds it was filled with onlookers and gawkers,
the curious, the bored, and the halfhearted. Jesus always attached those who were not interested beyond
the distorted image of this world. They even judged Jesus by these distortions.
We know many said I’ll follow you, but . . . . I’ll surrender most
things. I will listen, if it's what I want to hear. I willing follow you if you meet my expectation.Jesus had heard all these self-centered, conditional answers,
full of qualifiers and bargains. These are answers that only make sense a world reflected by
the distorted mirror.
Jesus understands our
dilemma (how we have come to believe the reflection to be real and that we have
come to love the distorted images more than life itself). We love them so much that
they have become for us; the norm, the ordinary and the expected, the way it
is.
So with words as sharp as a razor and as shocking as lightening
he says
“If anyone comes to
me without hating his father and mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters
and even his own life he cannot be my disciple”
This is hard. We
don’t hate our mother and father, sister or brother. We may have issues with them, but we don’t
hate them. But, the human condition (brought about by original sin) is
by its very nature self-centered and self-serving.The choices we make, the relationships we form are
conditional and measured by lose or gain. Our bonds and relationships are not only centered on the
self, they restrict and limit what we do and how we think within well-defined
and safe boundaries. I will only do so much, for some people, some of the time. I will care for me & mine alone and in the approved and
acceptable way – this is reasonable to the world.
It is our human nature to be conditional and self-centered, to
be restrictive and exclusive. But this is the distorted view and it limits, if not crush,
our relationship with God and neighbor. Jesus says this way of seeing is wrong. It is not life it is death.
To follow Jesus means expanding who we think we are beyond
the individual, beyond the limitations
of family and friend, beyond society and
culture. Jesus is not saying hate your loved ones, but look at them
in light of God without distortion. Have the courage to look away from the mirror and look
towards God.
When we do, our lives expand and our horizons grow, our
relationship with God is made right, as is our relationship with every father
and every mother, every spouse and every child, we do not hate them we love them more. And not for our sake, but for theirs.
But, Jesus also reminds us that to turn away from that false,
but comfortable vision, to proclaim it a lie, is to pick up the cross, because
the world will laugh at you and brush you aside and so it seems even hate you for
it.
But this cross is truth and light and the narrow gate we
hesitate to enter opens to an unlimited horizon and we can see for eternity in brightness because our vision
has be made clear in Faith and Truth andas the Wisdom writers says
“Thus the paths of those on earth are made straight”
