A common activity of these orientation days has been sitting in a circle and introducing ourselves to one and another. We did this as newly arrived Jesuits to Weston Jesuit Community. It was the same when the international students of the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College where I am studying met. Most recently, all of us who are beginning the Masters of Divinity course this Fall made a similar round of introductions.

At each of these “getting to know you” sessions, I found myself looking at the others in the room. I looked at my brother Jesuits from around the world, most here to study advanced degrees in Theology. I looked at eager newbies like me to theology from India and Dominica, from Ukraine and South Korea. I looked at my fellow classmates in the Masters of Divinity course—some of us, Jesuits, Redemptorists and Capuchins, preparing for ordination, and the lay faithful, coming to grow in their faith and to be better catechists and religion teachers.

As I looked at these people, I asked myself, who or what am I really looking at?

Am I looking at how different or similar they are to me? Am I looking at another who can be a friend? Or worse, am I screening out possible competitors? Do I see this person like the multitude, and hence, ordinary? Is my gaze fixating him into a role because he appears holy or discriminating her because she smokes and drinks?

Do you, like me, sometimes find yourselves, looking at another only to label him as this or that kind of person?

To be honest, we all do. Our human nature—at times, competitive, at others, discriminatory, and sadly, in some moments, uncharitable—can blur the giftedness of our vision.

Our vision is gift. It is gift because our eyes were made to see another’s goodness, not her shortcomings or his sinfulness, as we are prone to do. If we believe that God created us for a purpose, then our eyes are to help us realize it. For Ignatius of Loyola, we were created to be with God forever. Our eyes can help us recognize the immense good each person brings into the world, as well as the goodness each is. Seeing this reality can help us know God more easily and make our return of love to him more readily.

That our vision can do this should humble us to embrace wholeheartedly its celebratory nature. This expresses itself fully when we can see more clearly and honestly the potential each person has for God, no matter his human failings. Thomas Aquinas wrote that to see something created is to see not just what is before us, but, more importantly, to see that it is destined for God. If we are to be fully human as God created us to be, then, our eyes are to see one another not merely as each is at this moment but for the more and better he can become. Sadly, we struggle with this, as we do with a vocabulary that does not always enable us to speak of each other truly just yet.

Jesus offers us a language to do precisely this, however. His discourse verbalizes God’s compassion, forgiveness and restoration. It is not so much spoken as it is enacted. Where the Pharisees and Scribes were ready to stone the adulterous woman to death, quick to distance themselves from lepers and the sick and cruel in discriminating the lowly shepherds and the marginalized tax collectors, He instead touched, embraced and interacted with them. As persons, no other sensory act reminds us we are valued and valuable than to be touched. Jesus knew this. His actions speak to me of how he looked at each person with the eyes of God.

We can say his way of looking and communicating incarnated God’s Love; it truly recognizes each person for what she is—made in God’s likeness and meant for His eternal embrace.

And so, it will do me good when I sit with my classmates for our first theology class to remember this truth which the Dominican Timothy Radcliffe articulates thus:

Dear friend, do Radcliffe’s lines challenge you too to pause, look more carefully and reconsider who the others you look at each day really are?

photo: looking by adsj (paris, july 2009)

The Gospel readings earlier this past week challenged me greatly; they invited me to examine honestly the quality of my heart as I minister to the faithful.

In these readings, we encountered Jesus reminding the Pharisees of the need to live lives worthy of their calling as teachers of God’s Law. He strongly challenged them to examine their overzealous insistence on laws and appearances at the expense of mercy and good faith as they ministered to the Jewish faithful. His harshest words were reserved for their hypocrisy, for teaching the Law of God but failing to observe it faithfully in their lives.

Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees is also his encounter with me. Jesus challenges me as one who ministers to God’s people, and more so, as one preparing for the ordained ministry. There are two ways I recognize this challenge. Brad, my rector, articulates one way: am I my brother’s keeper, focused on correcting every error God’s people make, or am I my brother’s brother, called to accompany them by showing them the face of a forgiving God, whose laws are rooted in His Love? A second way I will express this is: am I proclaiming what God announces as his Good News of Peace, Justice and Love in word and deed yet failing to live it as it should be in my personal life?

Indeed, those of us who preach and teach from the pulpit are called, again and again, to an honest examination of the congruence between what we say with our lips and what we do in our lives.

But Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees is meant for all of us who say we are Christians.

Can we preach what we believe as Christians not only in word but in the ways we live it out in our personal lives? This is not so much a spiritual question, as it is fundamentally one regarding the quality of human living. Whether we are parents trying to raise our children in the faith, or teachers whose lives should witness Christian charity and excellence well in schools, or even those who hold public office, this is a question each one of us has to answer before God at the end of each day.

Edith Stein, who as the Carmelite Sr Benedicta of the Cross died for the faith, wrote that the Christian vocation calls each one of us to strive for that moment when we can stand before God as we are, without any label, title or excuse. Perhaps, when Jesus challenged the Pharisees then—as he does us today—He had no other design but to call all of us to live more authentic lives, the kind that will enable us to stand before God, naked as we truly are, because then we would be able to confess that we have helped others’ live God’s love well and that we have lived this love just as well and honestly with God.

photo: embrace by adsj ( at the louvre, paris, july 2009)