Preached Friday, Dec 6 - St. Kateri at Christ the King 6:30a and 8 - Friday of the First Week of Advent

Mass readings - http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/120613.cfm

I’ve never been blind, so I don’t know what it’s like to suddenly be able to see, but sometimes what we see is so new to us, so beautiful, so amazing, that it gives us a glimpse of what it must be like to suddenly be able to see.

            I recall the first time I drove into Yosemite Valley in California – you start out about 3000 feet above the valley, up near the tops of the mountains that surround the valley, and as you drive down down down into the valley the sheer walls of granite appear to rise about you, towering over you on every side, rising in some place more than a mile into the sky.  It’s an awe-inspiring thing to see and leaves you with your eyes wide open, mouth wide open in awe at God’s grandeur.

            Or the birth of a baby – I remember the first time I saw our daughter Lauren, emerge from my wife’s body, this little tiny brand new person, helpless and crying but also magnificent and beautiful – it was like seeing with brand new eyes the glory of God.

            And then there are the very real times when our spiritual eyes are opened as well, when we see spiritually in a new and different way.  I recall a time when I was really struggling with the Church’s teaching on the death penalty, and then one day over at St. Margaret Mary, meditating and gazing on the majestic crucifix, and it dawned on me that there is Our Blessed Lord, dying a horrible death from capital punishment, unjustly and cruelly killed, and my eyes and heart were opened.  I realized that the Lord I love and worship died that way, so how could I, as His disciple, support such a thing?

            Now I don’t think any of us here are physically blind, but as fallen human beings, as sinful people, you and I all spiritually blind in one way or another, or at least we have blind spots.  At least I do.  Where my paradigm, my way of looking at the world, is maybe faulty, in error, where I’m not seeing the truth.  Or where I’m just not keeping my eyes open to what is going on all around me.  Or perhaps where I’m deliberately closing my eyes to what’s going on around me.

            Perhaps it’s closing my eyes and putting out of my mind what’s going on at the Planned Parenthood on University Avenue.  Or ignoring, putting out of my mind, the plight of the poor and outcast, whether here in our own town, or starving in places like Haiti.  Ignoring the poor, the elderly, the homeless, the immigrant – this is a spiritual blindness that truth-be-told often afflicts me.

            This Advent season is a time of preparation for the Lord’s coming anew – it’s the time now for us to ask the Lord to open our eyes.  To open our hearts.  To see what He sees.  And we have His assurance that He can and will do it.  “Do you believe that I can do this?” He asks us. 

            The only question is this – do we really want our eyes opened?  For when He opens our eyes and our hearts, mine and yours, we will never be the same.