SANDALS AND MOSAICS

A close friend asked me to write a note to her sister, a firm believer who is fighting a losing battle with cancer, and has been wondering how we can be sure that God really is present in the midst of our sufferings. Since I've been praying hard for her for months, I felt that the Lord might offer me a few words of comfort to her. Here is what I wrote to my friend's sister a couple of days ago:.

=============================================

Dear_________________,

Here are a couple of thoughts that might be helpful to you right now.

If you look at the Book of Exodus chapter 3, the story of Moses and the burning bush, you will see in verse 5 that Moses is told. “Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground!“ This is because he is in the presence of the Mystery of the Divine, namely, God. So he has to take his sandals off out of reverence for the mysterious presence that he will never be able to comprehend or understand. God is just too big for our intellects.

So when you or I are standing in the presence of some terrible suffering or some awful evil or some tragedy, the first thing we must do is take off our shoes! We are in the presence of a deep mystery that we cannot comprehend. That means that we cannot really “know” for sure if God is really here in the midst of all this suffering. All we have is the gift of faith.

Today is the feast day of Saint Augustine. He once wrote that our

life is like a beautiful mosaic. But the problem is that we only get to look at the mosaic from very close up. We see only one or two little pieces of the mosaic, and therefore it makes no sense to us. But when the Lord calls us home to heaven, we get to look at the entire mosaic. Then we can finally see that the whole picture is so unbelievably beautiful and full of love that it takes our breath away.

But the way things are in this life, we don’t get to see the whole thing.

Yet if you listen hard, you can hear the Lord apologizing to you. “I’m sorry. I wish you could see the whole picture right now, but in order for you to do that, you would have to be God. So, I’m sorry. I apologize. But for right now, please try to trust me. Look for all those bits of love that I reveal to you every day. That’s the best I can do.”

There. That’s at least my way of looking at things.

I hope this was of some help.

Love and prayers,

Fr. Albert

No Shoes, Please

!

WILDERNESS AGAIN

I gave a day of Lenten Reflection yesterday using the following idea. I've used it before, but the response it received yesterdays way made me decide that it is worth revisiting.

Wilderness as a Metaphor 

We all know the story of how, after the tenth plague in Egypt, Pharaoh at last consented to let

the Israelites go into the wilderness to "offer a pilgrim-feast to the Lord." At that point Moses led them on a daring dash for freedom, through the Red Sea and out into the wilderness in what appeared to be a charge into the open jaws of death. In this wilderness there was little water and no food, only hostile tribes and poisonous snakes. 

Midbar

"Wilderness" translates the Hebrew word, midbar, which is sometimes incorrectly translated as "desert."My Hebrew dictionary says that midbar means "tracts of land used for pasturing flocks and herds; uninhabited land." The word conveys the sense of a land that is still wide open space, un-surveyed, unmapped, undomesticated by humans. The wilderness is land that is still relatively free of human control. In Exodus theology the wilderness represented divine presence, lack of human control -- and freedom. 

In sharp contrast to the wilderness stood Egypt, which was very much under human control. In fact, the Egypt of the Pharaohs was famous for its order and neatness. So Egypt represented human rationality, human order -- and slavery. Thus in Israel's tradition the wilderness came to symbolize the unpredictable and unfathomable side of life, the mystery of God. This contrast between Egypt and the wilderness is crucial to a Christian view of troubled times. 

The Wilderness as "God's Country" 

We can use the word "wilderness" to refer to any and all of those difficult times we ourselves

experience, as well as the times when we are experiencing the pain of others second-hand as I have been this past week. To live in the wilderness means living in mystery, where things are beyond my understanding and my control; it is to live in "God's Country." 

There is another important dimension to the wilderness symbolism. In Hebrew thought, history is experienced as linear, not cyclical: it starts with creation and moves relentlessly toward its fulfillment. 

We individuals are born into that flow and are called to shape it by our decisions. We are moving onward with the flow of time toward the future. God gives us the future and we accept it from his hand. When Israel was called out of Egypt, she was also called out of the past and asked to move joyfully and trustingly into God's future. The wilderness, then, was not only a symbol of divine mystery but also a symbol of the future. Each of us is called, like the Israelites, into an unknown future; but if we don't know God's goodness or trust in God's love, we experience the future as a threat. On the other hand, if we trust in God's goodness and love, then the future is transformed from a threat into a promise. The wilderness as the unknown future is in a special sense God's preserve, it is par excellence "God's Country." 

So, if I had to say a word of comfort to any of the people I’ve been praying for, I’d probably say something like this: 

"I see that right now events in your life are completely beyond your control, and the future is unknown and terrifying; you are in the land of darkest mystery. Well, take off your shoes, because you are on holy ground. Welcome to the wilderness -- welcome to God's country! This is where the Lord is expecting to meet you and love you and deliver you." 

Let’s all pray for our brothers and sisters who find themselves victims of every mysterious kind of tragedy around the world, and any people who are right now wandering in a land of fearful mystery. May they experience the reassurance that comes from realizing that the trackless wasteland in which they find themselves is indeed God’s mysterious country, and that God fully intends to meet them there – and probably already has. 

Not Yet!

My hour has not yet come

In the last sentence of this past Friday’s gospel passage, St. John tells us that the crowd in Jerusalem could not attack Jesus “because His hour had not yet come.”

He uses that phrase a couple of times in his gospel. First, we remember the scene at Cana when his mother asks him to solve the problem of the wine running out, and he explains “my hour has not yet come.”

Then, in verses skipped in the editing of Friday’s passage, from John Chapter 7, when “his brothers” encourage him to go up to Jerusalem, he replies “my time is not yet here;” and in the following verse he explains to them “I am not going up to this feast, because my time has not yet been fulfilled.” 

And then the verse in Friday’s gospel, “no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.”

In each of these passages, the same word shows up in the original Greek: oupo, a very common adverb meaning: “not yet.” 

As ordinary as the word  oupo, “not yet” may be, it is crucially important in all the passages we just heard: To say that the hour has NOT YET arrived indicates that eventually the hour WILL arrive.

It implies that Jesus' life is following the plan, but as of yet not all the stages of that plan have occurred. But they will. Christ’s earthly life is following a trajectory, heading in a single direction: it has significance, it has meaning.

And if that’s the case, then we who have Christ living in us and who are living in Christ, we are also living out that plan, following that same trajectory. This is especially important for you and me to remember when things are going badly. In times of pain and hopelessness we can hold onto that little word  oupo , “not yet,” that assures us that no matter what things may look like, our lives are heading in a certain meaningful direction, and therefore, everything in our lives has meaning, even and especially the seemingly bad parts.

Father, the hour has come

At the last supper, Jesus says, “Father, the hour has come, glorify, your son.” It is in his suffering and death that he finally reaches the hour, his goal: the Glory of the father. And we who have suffered with him will one day be glorified with him as well.

Each year during Holy Week and Easter, we celebrate the “hour,”  we remind ourselves how the story turns out:  Christ’s passion and death are oupo, not yet the end of the story. We know that the Easter mystery does not end on Good Friday: we live in the assurance that Sunday is coming.

The idea of oupo, “not yet” disappears early on Easter morning, when Christ is finally raised to a new life, and then in the ascension is brought to the fullness of glory at his Father's right hand. 

And we who are still suffering here in this vale of tears are on our way to join him there. It's just that our own hour of glory has not yet come. 

A final thought: Lots of times when when it seems that "God didn't answer your prayer," the Lord did in fact give an answer to your request -- the answer was oupo. 

Oupo -- Not yet!

THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

Today, July 27, is the feast of Mary Magdalene, who certainly is a good patron saint for people who have to deal with tragedy in their life. I think itś appropriate, then, to share some of my recent reading from Richard Rohr in Falling Upward. Here are his thoughts on the Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno. I have broken the passage into shorter paragraphs. 

The exact phrase “the tragic sense of life“ was first popularized in the early 20th century by the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, who courageously told his European world that they had distorted the meaning of faith by aligning it with the western philosophy of “progress“ rather than with what he saw as rather evident in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Jesus and the Jewish prophets were fully at home with the tragic sense of life, and it made the shape and nature of reality very different for them, for Unamuno, and maybe still for us. 

By this clear and honest phrase, I understand Unamuno to mean that life is not, nor ever has been, a straight line forward. According to him, life is characterized much more by exception and disorder, than by total or perfect order. Life, as the biblical tradition makes clear, is both loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos, and healing at the same time; life seems to be a coalition of opposites.

Unamuno equates the notion of faith with trust in an underlying life force so strong that it even includes death. Faith also includes reason, but is a larger category than reason for Unamuno. Truth is not always about pragmatic problem-solving and making things “work,“ but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true, or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either.

Life is inherently, tragic, and that is the truth, that only faith, but not our seeming logic, can accept. This is my amateur and very partial summary of the thought of this great Spanish philosopher. (Falling Upward, 54)

We Christians, are, of course, supposed to be well aware of how this tragic sense of life becomes real in the Easter Mystery; but we can use a lot of help when it comes to accepting it without understanding it.

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us!

HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN

The past two weekends have been so full that I've had to neglect my blog. My apologies to those who enjoy reading my weekly posts. I would like to present to you at post from a couple of years ago, trusting that it will still hjave some relevance. 

This year our Archbishop has once again transferred the celebration of the Ascension of the Lord from Thursday to the following Sunday, May 24. The message of the feast, however, remains the same. The liturgy of the paschal season has been leading us toward this feast for weeks, and reflecting on the meaning of the mystery of the Ascension can be a help to all of us during these pandemic days.  

In  the naïve worldview of ancient Israel, where the earth was as flat as a dinner plate and the firmament was above and the netherworld below, the idea of Jesus’ “ascending” up into a cloud was easily accepted. Too easily, perhaps, because it would then seem to mean that Jesus, taken “up” into heaven, had gone away from us and was thus no longer present.

Fortunately our modern astronomy won’t allow us to settle for this simple picture of Jesus rising “upward” to heaven. And that’s great, because we’re not as likely to misinterpret it as meaning “Jesus left us.” We are forced to look for the meaning of the event rather than simply settling for “Jesus went up into the clouds of heaven.” And it is precisely this theological meaning that can be a comfort to us during these sad and uncertain times of pandemic.

The feast of the Ascension celebrates Jesus’ passing beyond the familiar dimensions of time and space, beyond the reach of our senses and into the presence of the Father. So what? Well, think about it: This means that Jesus is no longer bound by time and space, so he is now more present to us than he ever was previous to the Ascension. He is in our hearts and bodies, in our friends and our foes, in the spring breeze and, mysteriously, in the strands of DNA inside the novel coronavirus.

Now, we may be repelled by the idea that God could somehow be present in a terrible, deadly virus and all of the suffering it has caused, but that’s far more comforting than the alternate view – that God is totally absent from those tragic events and horrible microorganisms, and that we are left to face these horrors on our own. A God who’s only present to us when times are good is not much of a God.

So as we continue to struggle with the depressing statistics, the deaths of family members or friends, the dark uncertainties of unemployment and closed classrooms, let's remember the lesson of the Ascension: Christ is intimately present with each of us in the midst of this whole mess, and is walking every step with us through this valley of the shadow of death.

 "Though I walk in the valley of darkness

I fear no evil, for you are at my side. (Psalm 23:4)" 

A GOOD QUESTION

The Israelites´ Question

Last Sunday´s first reading, from the book of Exodus, ended with a question that has stayed with me all

The Israelites complained to Moses

week. You may remember that in that passage the Israelites were complaining about being pulled out of Egypt into the inhospitable wilderness. The final sentence reads: “The place was called Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, is the Lord, in our midst or not?”

For the Israelites, the question was never “Is there a God?“ Or “Does God exist?“ For them the question was always “Is God here with us right at this moment.“  So now in Exodus Chapter 17 we hear the Israelites posing their question: "Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

My Question, Too?

This week I’ve been wondering if I´m so very different from the Israelites. Sometimes in some difficult situations it seems that God is terribly distant. Just when I need his loving presence most, the Lord seems nowhere to be found. Now of course I believe that God exists. That’s not the question. The question echoes one that occurs in the psalms:“Where is our God” “Does he march with our armies no longer?”

Our great mystical writers talk about experiencing “the dark night of the soul.” I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten that deep into the darkness, but there certainly have been times when I have begun to ask the Israelites´ question…

I see that I wrote a little prayer in my journal last Sunday evening: “Lord, please give me the eyes to see you at my side, and strengthen my faith to feel your loving help.”

This fits in with one of my Lenten resolutions, namely, to try to make it easier for others to believe in God. How often do I help a brother or a sister feel the Lord´s loving presence in his or her life?

Come to think of it, I can name quite a few people who do that for me. So now it’s just a matter of passing it on.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

 

ASK THE COMPUTER

In the mid-1970's I learned a computer language called "Basic," and under the tutelage of Fr. Mark, a brother monk, I learned to program our computer to do all sorts of handy things for me in my work at school. I loved the thrill of getting the computer to follow my directions and, say, make a list of all the students who had signed up for Geometry but had received an F on Algebra I the previous semester. 

It was even more fun, in a weird sort of way, it the program didn't work at first. Say I type "Run" and the computer screen fills up with a single student's name appearing over and over. Uh-oh! Now what? I type "Break." The first step is to ask the computer what's going on. I ask it to tell me the value of each of the variables I've assigned at the top of the program. Let's say I ask for the current value of the variable SN$(%), that increases by 1 each time a name is printed.  Whoa! The value of SN$(%), which should be over 50 by now, is still at 0! That's the explanation of the weird output. (I love explanations, don't you?) So then I go into my program and make the necessary change, and type "Run" again and see how much further I get toward producing the list. Asking the computer makes perfect sense because I know that the answer, the logical explanation, is there somewhere -- I just need to ask the right question.

"REASON" TAKES OVER

In the 1700's in Europe, the rationalists saw that everything in the world seemed to obey the laws of the sciences that were being developed at the time. They decided that the universe was a vast mechanical system governed by the laws of the physical sciences. Having applied the laws of evidence, cause and effect and so on in the physical world with such astounding success, they couldn't stop themselves, and began applying these laws to everything, even things that lay outside of their neat time-space box. They concluded that if something couldn't be measured scientifically then it simply didn't exist. They just decided this, of course, with (paradoxically) no evidence for their claim. So, out the window went ultimate meaning in life, God, existence beyond the grave, and all such non-scientific religious concepts.

THE GOD OF EXPLANATION

Up until that time people had believed in a transcendent God -- the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for example. The Judeo-Christian God was involved with His people, and loved them, while they in return could praise, thank, glorify and even complain loudly to their God. But now suddenly the rationalist worldview swept over the Western World, and the God of Abraham was replaced by "the god of explanation." You and I sometimes fall into this mistake, too: We ask God to explain himself to us, to justify why a certain tragic thing has happened. "If you are all loving and infinitely kind and just, then why was this baby born with this awful disease? Explain yourself!" We think it's like asking the computer until you get the rational solution to the question. And naturally we get frustrated, angry and feel betrayed when no explanation is forthcoming.

WANTING IT BOTH WAYS

Why do we people of faith sometimes get angry at God for not offering us explanations for the existence of evil in the world? Well, we seem to want two mutually contradictory things at the same time: We want a God who operates in a rational, logical manner (like my computer program), a God that we can comprehend -- a God like us, whom we can therefore predict and even control. But at the same time we want a God who is infinitely loving and forgiving, and whose power and wisdom lie way beyond the limits of our puny human understanding.

The God of Faith permeates the world God created, with its incredible beauty and elegance. But this same God invites us into a relationship of intimacy that involves vulnerability, s[spontaneity and trust. inviting you and me to rely on the virtue of hope in the face of the more mysterious parts of the Divine Plan. The God of Faith does not, indeed can not offer us explanations for the most important things in our lives. That's why the God of Faith apologizes to us (see last week's post): God created us to be curious problem-solvers, but then came up with a Plan for the world that is beyond our ability to comprehend. What a bummer! 

But also, what an opportunity for a relationship of intimacy and trust between ourselves and God!  

 

LEAVE A MESSAGE, I'LL GET BACK TO YOU

Three Tries But No Answer 

I ended last week's post about prayer with the thought that I might look at the problem of "unanswered prayer" this week. And now, conveniently enough, we find the following passage assigned as part of the Second Reading at mass for Sunday, July 4:

Brothers and sisters:That I, Paul, might not become too elated,

because of the abundance of the revelations,

a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan,

to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. 

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me,

but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,

for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 4:7f)

Paul has just finished describing a mystical vision which had lifted him to the heights of heaven and let him see secrets that he can't even put into words. Then comes the above passage in which he explains that God wanted to prevent him from getting too puffed up over that experience. We don't know exactly what he's referring to by his "thorn in the flesh;" but it's some sort of suffering, whether physical, spiritual, or psychological. One scholar suggests that it may have been a particular person who opposed Paul at every turn and made his preaching ministry very difficult. 

In any case, Paul grows weary of being "beaten up" by this affliction, and prays intensely on three occasions to be delivered from it. But in vain. Some might say that God doesn't answer his prayer, but this isn't the way Paul himself sees it. God does answer his prayer, telling him: “My grace is sufficient for you." Paul's own preferred plan is that he be freed from this affliction, but God offers a different plan in which Paul will be strengthened by his suffering, "for power is made perfect in weakness.” God doesn't just tell him "Find a way to deal with it!" but assures him that God's loving presence will be with him through every trial, and will be enough to get him through. 

Stretching Exercises

St. Augustine suggests that when God doesn't answer our prayer immediately it's because the waiting in faith increases our desire and "expands" our hearts. I remember reading this in his "Letter to Proba" and having to look up his Latin word capacius. It turns out to be the comparative form of the adjective capax, which means something like "of sufficient size, roomy." Ever since then, when I'm in the midst of some bout of unanswered prayer I picture my heart being stretched, made capacius, by my constant earnest asking. Why does God need my heart to be made "roomier?" There's the mystery: I've no idea. But I do know this much: that the Lord's grace is sufficient to get me through the situation, and that whatever the mysterious plan is, it has to do with Love, with making me less selfish and more able to welcome others into my now roomier heart.

The Vending Machine Problem

One key to dealing satisfactorily with the question of unanswered prayer is the notion that we are created for a relationship of personal intimacy with God. God wants to have a relationship of love with each of us, but such a relationship involves risk-taking: leaving myself vulnerable, letting the other know all about me, leaving the other person free to respond in love in whatever way they wish, being open to surprises and to disappointments. That's what "intimacy" involves.

A telling contrast is the example of a vending machine. I insert my dollar bill with complete confidence that the machine is going to deliver exactly what I asked for, right away. This is a mechanical operation performed by a machine. There's no question of conscious response to a request -- the machine is engineered to "react" to specific commands. So of course I get outraged if the machine gobbles up my dollar but then just sits there mutely without reacting. I fume: "Where's my bag of chips!"

So, now. think about your relationship with God. Do you ever think of God as a vending machine that is supposed to react the way you want because you've inserted some required amount of prayers or masses or good deeds? Or is your God a Person who is free to respond to you in the most loving possible way, even if that way is beyond your ability to understand?

Disappointed 
Customer

When the vending machine doesn't deliver, people get upset and may even start rocking the machine or kicking it. When their Vending-Machine-God doesn't deliver, people get upset and feel betrayed, even crushed by their disappoint- ment. God didn't deliver.

The Mystery Remains 

Because God did not create us as automatons but as free persons designed for intimacy with our loving Creator, unanswered prayer will always be a possibility, a mystery we have to live with. 

But at least now it sounds like a plan. Or should I say a Plan?

EMMANUEL IN THE PANDEMIC

It seems that everyone was happy to say good bye to 2020 and move on in hopes that 2021 will be better. I guess that to a lot of people it must seem that in 2020 the world slipped beyond God's grasp and is now tumbling in a free fall towards chaos.   

Early this morning (Saturday, Jan. 2, 2021) as I sat in church I opened to the first reading for today's (Saturday's) mass, from the First Letter of John 2:22-28.  I couldn't help noticing that in the space of five verses one word is repeated six times: the verb "remain," which is one of John's favorite words. In Greek, μένω ménō (men'-o) means "to stay, remain, abide". It is often used to describe the deep, intimate and mysterious mutual indwelling of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this morning's passage, however, it's used to describe how the Word remains in us and we remain "in the Son and in the Father." 

When I saw this passage I immediately thought of another aspect of the word, namely "to remain permanently, to abide." The Word became incarnate for us and "abides" with us forever. "Emmanuel, God is with us" describes a condition that will last for eternity, not just for the Christmas season.

So, how does this rich verb help us to reflect on the pandemic? Here's what occurred to me: God abides with us and with all of creation, no matter how chaotic, how painful and absurd everything looks to us with our limited intellects. It takes courageous faith the keep insisting the God is somehow still in control of the world, and that God's loving plan for the world is moving forward every day. 

Some of New York's 45 mobile morgues

Emmanuel is with us walking in the corridors if the ICUs, and among the refrigerated trailers filled with corpses of Covid 19 victims for whom there is no longer room in the morgues. Emmanuel. God-with-us, is not only present with us, but comes in mystery "with healing in his wings" to encourage us, to lift us up, to give us the strength and energy to keep moving on. 

The year 2020 was filled, like any other year, with the healing presence of God's love for you and me and all of humanity, indeed of all creation. It's just that 2020 demanded, it would seem, a lot more trust in God's unfailing goodness and infinite love. And we don't do too well with things "infinite" and "mysterious." So, there's one good aspect of the year 2020: It gave us plenty of exercise in the virtues of Faith, Hope and of course Charity toward one another.

May the new year of 2021 offer us many more such opportunities, but maybe in ways that are easier for us humans to understand.

O come, Emmanuel!

FACIAL RECOGNITION FOR CHRISTMAS

Last week I was walking through the deserted halls of our school building, when I met a young man pushing a dust mop - obviously working for our student-run maintenance corporation. Like me he was wearing a face mask.

He seemed vaguely familiar when I stared at him,  but after squinting at his partially covered face for a few seconds I finally said,

“Okay. I give up!  Who are you?”

“Terrance!” he said.

“Hey! Terrance! How are you! Sorry I didn't recognize you!”

It’s so frustrating when you can’t recognize someone because of their mask. Hold onto that thought for a moment.

For some weeks now we have been preparing for the birth of Christ: The church has been presenting us with messianic prophecies every day; we know many of them by heart. The words of the Advent hymns and antiphons have built up the suspense, The figure of John the Baptist stepped onto the stage on the Second Sunday of Advent. We’ve been lighting an additional candle on the Advent wreath for the past four Sundays. We’ve been singing “Soon and very Soon, We’re goin’ to see the King”

But finally Christmas has arrived, and what do we get? Take a look at the manger scene. Take a good look.

Where’s the King? Where is the savior of the Nations? Where is the Wonder-counselor, the Mighty God? The Everlasting Father? The Prince of Peace? All we see is a baby -- lying on a bed of straw, no less!

What a disappointment! This is God become Man? This is the Word become Flesh? Something is wrong here -- this is not the way God is supposed to look! He’s unrecognizable -- like Terrance in the hallway wearing his mask.

Let’s take a moment to look again at the manger scene. We can learn a lot there about God: One lesson is that God is very shy. Rather than risk overwhelming us with his majestic power and presence, God chose to come to us “veiled in flesh,” to make himself more approachable. But of course, the problem is that because of this, God often seems to be wearing a mask, and is difficult to recognize.

Is God really present in this Covid pandemic?

Is God really present in the divisiveness and the hatred that we see all around?

I don’t find it easy at all to recognize God present in the suffering of millions of people around the world.

Last week an article published in a scientific journal reported the results of research on the effect that face masks

have on our ability to recognize faces. It seems that our brain, which is so good at recognizing a face instantly, does not analyze individual features such as nose or eyebrows, but instead, it recognizes the entire face at once as a single pattern. This explains why we find it so difficult to recognize a familiar face on the basis of a single feature only -- say the eyes, and why it's so easy when we’re given an entire facial pattern to look at.

So, one great gift that we’re given by God at Christmas is the eyes of faith; we might call it the gift of divine facial recognition. With the eyes of faith we can look past the mask and recognize the pattern of God’s love working itself out in the world. With these eyes we can look at the baby lying in the manger and see the Second Person of the Trinity 

With these eyes we can look at our everyday frustrations and difficulties and recognize them as part of the pattern -- we recognize in them something of the mysterious face of our infinitely loving God. In the divisiveness and the hatred that we see all around us we can sense that somehow this is part of the pattern of God’s loving plan for the world.

Of course, it’s not easy at all to recognize God’s face in the suffering of millions of people around the globe, but the eyes of faith prepare us to believe that it is at least possible..

When I get discouraged and weary, and ask myself, “Is God really present in this Covid pandemic?” the eyes of faith will not reveal a nice clear picture of God’s love at work -- my ability to recognize facial patterns doesn’t go very far when it comes to the mysterious, infinite face of God.     

                                               

So, let’s turn one last time to the manger. God invites us to come to the stable this Christmas and gaze on Jesus, who is Love incarnate: With the eyes of faith we recognize the infant lying there as the sacrament, the physical presence of God’s tender loving care for the world. 

Look on the scene at Bethlehem with the eyes of faith, with your best pattern recognition skills, and then when you return your gaze to your everyday world, you may find that your eyes of faith will let you recognize some of the Pattern in even the most painful and absurd events.

During this unusual Christmas Season may you have the eyes to recognize all around you the face of a God who loves you and each one of us with love beyond our understanding -- and beyond our recognition.