Homily: See

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 32 / Sunday

Readings: 1 Kings 17.10-16 / Psalm 145.6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10 (R/v 1b) / Hebrews 9.24-28 / Mark 12.38-44

Sisters and brothers have you had to resort to an eye test to check your vision? Many of us have for various reasons.  We then had to wear spectacles or have an eye operation. All this to help us see more clearly and see well.

In a manner of speaking, Jesus is administering an eye test to his disciples in today’s gospel passage. He does this by asking them to watch and to see people and to then consider and discern their actions.

Jesus and his disciples are in the temple watching people put money in the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. Then a poor widow comes and puts in two copper coins worth a few cents (the copper coin was the smallest in circulation at that time). 

Undoubtedly the disciples would have noticed the big donations because they may have been impressed by that. I think we would too. 

Jesus called his displaces to himself and said, “Amen I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all that she had her whole livelihood.”

Jesus’ sees the rich donors and the poor widow with God’s eyes. Through God’s eyes, he sees and discerns the richness of the poor widow’s scarcity; she gives much from her little.  The disciples probably didn’t even notice her. They see her with very human eyes. Like them, we may not pay any attention to the widow’s offerings: they seem so insignificant. 

Indeed, our eyes are often blinded by what we value more as human beings – wealth, status, power. Many times what we see or what we give value to is not what God sees or values. Human beings look at appearances whereas God looks at the heart of each person.

Today Jesus is, in fact, challenging us with the same eye test. How do you and I see others and the world? 

He wants us – like the disciples – to be careful about how we see, value, understand and respond to others and the world when we see them with our human eyes. He wants us to see with God’s eyes.

How can we see with God’s eyes? By having a contemplative gaze. 

This is the gaze Jesus had on the world. He saw the need to be forgiven in the adulterous woman who was about to be stoned. He noticed the desire for holiness in all who wanted to follow him. He recognized a thirst for acceptance and welcome in the lepers, tax collectors, and prostitutes society condemned. He glimpsed repentance and a longing to love again in the eyes of Peter who had betrayed him. And looking down from the Cross, he saw the undying love of a mother standing by him in her pain and sorrow.  

A contemplative gaze sees the person, not the sinner.

A contemplative gaze sees God’s love present, in both the best and worst of times.

A contemplative gaze appreciates God’s invitation to be merciful and compassionate to understand, to be with, to care for, to uplift another.  

Jesus lived in the world with this contemplative gaze.

Isn’t this how God sees us too – with a contemplative gaze? This gaze that moves God to act in the best way possible for us and our happiness? This gaze of God that sees us as his beloved?

Do we see others we interact with and the world around with a similar contemplative gaze?

It also takes a contemplative look to see how God is indeed working in our lives. A teacher in SJI shared with me how she only realized this after she joined SJI on the third time she was asked. The first two times led to nothing. The final invitation led to her employ.  God, she shared, was behind all these steps that led her to SJI.

God has his time to do what is best for us. Sometimes we need to wait, and sometimes we need to act. We need to humble ourselves so that we can be on time for God’s plans. We need to look contemplatively if we want to see how God is indeed laboring in our lives.

To do this, we need to trust that God is already and always present in all the moments of our lives and in all the interactions with others we have. This trust is visible in the life of the poor widow.  She sees that God is with her in her poverty and that God will take care of her. She has confidence that God is present.  

I believe her confidence empowers her to look at her two coins as worthy offerings to God – they are after all from God and God will bless her with more because she gave her most, her best. This is how the contemplative gaze helps this poor widow see her life, freeing her from the fear of being poor and being less.

How can we grow in this trust? By listening to Jesus who repeatedly teaches us that God is faithful and will never abandon us, even in our darkest struggles.

Elijah had this trust in God and he taught the poor widow in the first reading to have this same trust. He asks her for bread. She responds, “I have nothing baked; there is only a handful of flour in my jar and a little oil in my jug.” The famine is so severe that she believes she and her son will die soon. But Elijah assures her, “For the Lord, the God of Israel says, ‘The jar of flour shall not go empty, not the jug of oil run dry.” 

The widow fed Elijah and indeed, “she was able to eat for a year and he and her son as well; the jar of flour did not go empty, not the jug of oil run dry, as the Lord had foretold through Elijah”. The widow learned to trust in God’s unfailing providence.

How can we reach this level of trust in our lives, especially when we struggle or are in pain often? How can we trust that the Lord is with us and for us?

By learning to see more and more with a contemplative gaze. The widow with little faith learned over a year that God always provided enough to get by. It was not much but it was just enough to feed herself, her son and one extra person, Elijah. She learned to trust in God’s presence and labor for her wellbeing. 

I believe we have this gaze too. We practice it, perhaps, not too well and not too often. Isn't this why we pray, come to Eucharist, seek out Confession? Don’t we experience God’s goodness when our spouse forgives us, or we are moved to hug our children or when we care for a work colleague?

I believe we are all learning slowly but surely to recognize God’s faithful presence in their lives. It is founded on the trust that God is with us. It is lived with the hope that God acts for us. It really comes to be our way of Christian living when we practice it daily – to look out attentively for God’s presence and actions in our lives, and then to give thanks.  This is what it means to find God in all things

Today’s readings offer us people of faith who see with God’s eyes. Their example must be the answer to our desire to find God and see the world as God does. The answer is the same as that given by a police officer to a world-class violinist looking for the concert hall in a city he was unfamiliar with for his solo recital. “How do I get to the concert hall?” he asked with his violin under his arm. “How?” The answer was “Practice, practice, practice”.

Whether we are joyful or struggling, whether we are beginning or reviewing the day, whether we are praying or working, whether we consider ourselves saintly or sinful, let us never grow tired of asking the Lord to help us see with his eyes: “Lord, what do you see in this situation I am in or in this person before me? I see this but often I am short-sighted. Help me see better.”

At that moment, we might hear the Lord reply, “Do you see what I see”. If we dare to see as God invites us to, we might see better and more clearly: see from his point of view and see all with God's love – see really with God’s eyes. 

Preached at Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore

photo: (internet) ichfragmich.eu