Seeing Can be a Dangerous Thing--Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent

We all have a desire to see. 

Going to a professional sports game, there is nothing better than seeing that first glimpse of the field.  You enter the stadium, walking through concrete walls and darkness.  Navigating your way through crowds you find your section.  You ascend stairs going up and up. Then, you walk out towards the light.  There in front of you is the bright green grass.  The massive expanse of the field.  The players warming up.  The colors.  The exhilaration.  This is all great of course, unless you are just a little kid less than three feet tall.  Being short is not always so cool.  Unable to see over the crowd and over the railing, you stand on tippy toes, you jump up and down, but it doesn’t help.  Then your dad reaches down.  He lifts you up on his shoulders.  Then you see what has mesmerized everyone else.  It is glorious.  We all have a desire to see.  

The same is true when we love someone.  The entire process of dating is a process of trying to see.  We try to see if the person is who with think he or she is.  We go on dates trying to see if anything can be found in common.  We meet each other’s families trying to see where this person has come from.  Then we commit to marriage once we have seen more clearly who the person is.  If we really love him or her we keep searching, longing, desiring to see into the other person’s heart.  For we all have a desire to see.

This last week we traveled down to Hanceville, Alabama to visit the shrine of the Blessed Sacrament.  At this shrine there is a community of cloistered nuns.  They have given their lives for one reason alone: to see.  At this monastery they have the world’s second largest monstrance.  It is around 7 feet tall.  The host that is in the monstrance is bigger than our heads.  The word monstrance comes from the Latin word monstrare, which means to show.  You see, God knew how much each of us longs to see and so he gave us a way to gaze upon him.  Imagine, when Jesus is in the monstrance we can gaze upon him and begin to see who he really is, and who we really are, too.  The sisters there gave their life in order to see more deeply.  For we all long to see.

The man in today’s Gospel longed to see, too.  He was born blind.  Imagine being born blind.  We all might know of someone who has been born blind.  But imagine that for yourselves.  If we think we long to see in life, he certainly must have longed to see.  Then he came in contact with the light of the world.  The one who came to shine light on all things that all people might see.  And the light of the world healed his vision and he was able to see.

 

But what he soon found out though, is that even though seeing was wonderful, it could also be a dangerous thing.  For in seeing we often end up being changed.

 

For the man born blind thing began to change.  He was questioned by people.  His family was interrogated.  And he himself was asked to make a decision.  To decide on who he believed the man was who healed him.  Who was this Jesus?  Because he saw he could not deny that this must have been God.  For only God could heal a person’s eyes.  And so they threw him out.  They rejected him.  They kicked him out and he was then separated from all that he once knew.  For even though we all long to see, seeing can be a really dangerous thing.

I remember visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC.  It is a remarkable and yet devastating museum.  One of the exhibits is actually surrounded by a wall about 5 feet tall.  The purpose of the wall is to keep any young children from seeing in the exhibit.  The exhibit is horrifying.  It depicts many of the gruesome medical experiments the Nazis forced on the Jews.  I remember that there was a younger boy there with his mother.  As we all do, he wanted to see.  The mother thought about it.  Then she hesitated.  Then she lifted her son up that he might see.  His face became sad.  He started to cry.  His life was probably changed that day.  For how could he be the same?  Sometimes seeing can be a very dangerous thing.

 

The same can be true of someone who is our mentor or parent.  A person we place on a pedestal, because they have changed our life for the good. Yet, sometimes when we see even more of who they are it can be devastating.  I remember speaking to a woman who was so saddened when she found out that her father had been unfaithful to her mom.  She saw him as being a little less than a God.  And yet the knowledge of his infidelity, even though it helped her see him for all he was, was so difficult to handle.  They worked through their relationship little by little.  They are now closer for it.  But seeing for her was dangerous, too.  For it changed her and things could never be the same.  It required her to grow, to see life in a different way, and to learn forgiveness. 

A neat thing about having people in the RCIA program in a church is that they provide an example for us all.  We get to see people who desire to see more clearly.  They desire to see faith at a new level.  They desire to see God at a new level.  They desire to see themselves and the world around them at a new level.  But if they, and if we too, are serious about our faith, seeing life through the eyes of faith should be a dangerous thing.

Through faith we see ourselves a little different, and it is a dangerous thing:  we realize we don’t really have all the answers, and that is a scary thing.  We realize we have squandered a lot of things away in life, and that makes us sad.  We realize we have let a lot of people down, and that humbles us.  But we also see how loved we are, and that we were created in a special way.  We see the gifts we truly have and we see how we can use them.  We see that there is hope in our lives, and that each day we can be sure that God is trying to help us grow.

 

We see those around us a little different, too, and this is a dangerous thing:  we see how imperfect they are, and yet we are called to love them.  We see how messy they can be, and yet we know that we cannot live without them.  We see the poor and we simply can’t ignore them.  We see those who don’t have faith and our hearts ache inside and we desire to show God to them.  We see the injustice we have created and we see how hard it is to change things, but that we must change because we now have seen.

And we see God a little different, and this is dangerous too.  We see that he has given us so much and yet so often we have ignored it.  We see his sacraments like the Eucharist and confession and we can no longer take them for granted.  We grow in a reverence for them because we see how fundamentally divine they are. We see the great sacrifice he made for us and we realize that we must sacrifice all we are, too.  For we all long to see, but seeing is a dangerous thing.

We all long to see.  Just like the man born blind, coming to know the light of the world helps us to see.  Yet this seeing is a dangerous thing.  Because we realize that unless our lives are completely changed, every single day, then maybe we truly don’t see.  So we turn to God once again in this Mass and ask him to help us to see.  For we long to see, even if it is a dangerous thing.