Dec

4

Seeing & Hearing What Others Cannot

December 4, 2007 |

I started reading Spe Salvi yesterday.  Great stuff, but it may take me a while to get through it.

In any case, Pope B16’s timing is impeccable - a treatise on hope during the season of hope.

One of the points I’ve picked up already from Spe Salvi is that hope is something that may not be seen or heard - it is just something we believe and hold true because we have faith in Christ and faith in objective truths.

Today’s gospel (Luke 10:21-24) carries this theme forward when Christ declares that “[b]lessed are the eyes that see what you see.  For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” 

And this declaration is the essence of our faith - we share the same hope because we see what others do not - we hear what others do not - we believe what others do not.

Have you ever knelt before the tabernacle and felt another’s presence within you?  How about just after receiving communion?  How about after receiving reconciliation?  How about just sitting in a park, on a beach or before a river?  This presence is Christ!  We cannot physically see or hear - but we nonetheless do see and hear - spiritually.  And we see and hear - where others cannot - because of our faith and hope.

And if we do not see or hear in this way - well, then we need to look harder and open our ears more - because Christ is trying to reach us.

How anyone can live their life without hope is beyond me.  We have to believe in a better tomorrow, a better world, a better life.  It’s a common trait shared by every great person who has ever walked this earth - an uncompromisable and incorruptible hope.

If we do not have this hope, we better get it - or we are doomed to come up short in the eyes of our Lord and the great men and women upon whose shoulders we stand.

We must see and hear even if others cannot or will not.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Marc Aupiais on December 5, 2007 3:33 am

    I agree. :)

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