Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
In Pope Francis’s book The Church of Mercy, there is a chapter entitled “Being With Christ”. Our Holy Father acknowledges the importance of prayer, meditation, Eucharistic Adoration, and other devotions in our spiritual life. But he also poses a question that we rarely, if ever, consider: “Do you allow yourselves to be gazed upon by the Lord?” When was the last time you just sat or kneeled before the Lord and simply allowed God to ‘gaze’ upon you?
Today’s first reading from 1 Kings tells of the transfer of the ark of the Lord’s covenant to the new temple, built by King Solomon, in Jerusalem; it was a very solemn event. Only priests were privileged enough to enter the ‘holy of holies’ to place the ark and, even then, they had to leave the sanctuary when the ‘dark cloud’ entered that place. “The Lord intends to dwell in the dark cloud”, says King Solomon. We know the Lord was always near and with his people, but there was always a distance.
Mark’s Gospel tells a very different story. Jesus arrives by boat at Gennesare, but when the crowd recognizes him they immediately run and gather all the sick and infirm; they bring them directly to Jesus. Mark 6:56 says, ‘that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak.” How breathtaking to realize the Holy One of God was among them with no distance and no intermediary. Though we can envision Jesus laying his hands directly upon all those infirm, we may not think about the fact that Jesus looked into the eyes of each and every one of those he healed. It may not occur to us that Jesus initiated personal contact with each and every individual he touched that day. We are only told that if they merely touched his tassel they were healed!
Pope Francis points to one of the most fundamental elements of personal relationships—gazing upon the ‘other’. When we are in the presence of someone we love, do we not look upon them—gaze at them? And is this gaze not vital to our communication with them? This day, when we pray or meditate or otherwise spend time with our beloved Lord, may we spend some time and simply allow the Lord to gaze upon us. May we let go of ourselves enough to be vulnerable to the God of mercy—the God who so longs for us.
--Gail Lyman