31st Sunday after Pentecost
Do you remember the parable of the sower? We find it earlier in Luke’s Gospel. “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell along the path, and was trodden under foot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns grew with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold.”
“Lord, let me receive my sight” is the cry of the good soil, “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience”.
Think of the ways we use the word “see”.
There is physical sight. I can see you sitting there in the pews. You can see me standing up here, speaking. As Webster puts it, to perceive with the eye; to perceive or discern as if by sight.
But there are other meanings, to recognize, and to understand.
Jesus said that He is the light of the world, but when we’re born, we cannot perceive that light, at least not directly. We are born blind, spiritually blind. It’s only through God’s grace that we can perceive that light. That grace, the grace that begins the lifting of the blindness, comes with baptism, with being born of water and the spirit.
Even then, though, we usually cannot perceive the light. Not directly. Initially, we may be like the blind person standing in the sunlight. We can feel the heat, but not see it.
How, then, do we begin perceiving the light? By asking to see, and by living in such a way that we can recognize the light. We must ask.
As children, we learn prayers. We learn the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be. We learn acts of contrition, acts of faith. And those are good starts.
I want you to visualize a teapot. Now, if you want to fill that teapot, you can’t just run it under the water, can you? No. You have to take the cover off. You have to make it possible for the water to get in that teapot.
It’s the same way with God’s grace, with the spiritual sight that He wants to give us. His desire is to pour Himself into us, to let us see. But, unless we make a place for that grace in ourselves, it cannot become a part of us.
How do we make that room?
By prayer. Meditative, contemplative prayer.
Our prayer must not be solely for things we need. The Old Testament prophet, Samuel, didn’t say, “Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking”. No. He said, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”
As the psalmist wrote: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep thy law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of thy commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to thy testimonies, and not to gain!”
How do we pray like that?
In the Rosary, we pray, meditating on the Gospel, while asking the Mother of God to pray for us. We listen to the Lord speaking to us through the mysteries.
In the Jesus prayer, we continually pray a variation of this blind man’s prayer, “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.
In praying Scripture, especially the psalms, we internalize the Word of God, making it part of our own psyche.
And in praying with icons, or even gazing at them in contemplation, we are allowing the spirit to minister to our inward souls.
In our prayer, we should be open to two types of seeing. We need to pray for understanding, of course. But we also need to pray for recognition - recognition of Christ and his works in our lives, of the presence of the saints, and recognition of our own sinfulness and the need for repentance.
In conclusion, let me share with you the first stanza of an old Irish hymn, one that conveys this message.
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;
Thou my best thought, by day or by night;
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light
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