Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
One of the things I like to show students in my ethics courses is optical illusions: the picture of the bunny (or is it a duck?); the old woman (or is she young?). There are many others. Part of the reason I show my students these optical illusions is to press home the point that seeing - whether with biological eyes, or when looking at the moral problems they are presented with on a daily basis - isn't a simple matter. HOW you see is crucial to your sense of right and wrong and to the decisions you decide to make.
In today's gospel (Matthew 6:19-23), I think Jesus is alluding to something like this when he talks about the eye being the lamp of the body. "If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light." But if your eye is not sound, or if the light you see is darkness, you will not be filled with light.
Of course Jesus wants us to be filled with light, because we know that Jesus is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. We, who are followers of Jesus, seek to share in that light.
Of course, the most difficult thing to do can be to see something well. How many times I have made decisions, or said exactly the wrong thing to someone, because there were things I didn't SEE. Today's first reading (2 Kings 11:1-4, 9-18, 20) suggests one way to cultivate "right seeing" by suggesting that patience and a desire not to want to rush into things headlong are important. Athaliah, seeing that she might now have incredible power and control once her son dies, rules over the land. She quickly and ruthlessly murders her grandchildren and institutes worship of pagan gods. All that she sees is that power and greed are good; she acts quickly and without remorse. But her quick actions only give the illusion of true power.
Jehosheba and Jehoiada, on the other hand, try to save at least one of the children. They do not look for immediate gains, but instead wait for six years until an appropriate moment when the military and others might properly acknowledge Joash as king. Athaliah's greed is overshadowed by patience and seeking good.
Patience and timeliness do not, of course, always guarantee good outcomes - just as behaving impatiently does not guarantee a good outcome either. But patience and taking time do give us an opportunity to cultivate the lamps that are our eyes, to see as much as we possibly can, before we commit to certain actions or decisions.
Today, let us ask for grace to see as God would like us to see.
- Jana M. Bennett