Seeing through a clean lens
Faith in Christ Jesus is an exacting, uncompromising humble service to and with others that can look deceptively like anything but what it is – my only true joy and freedom. To become food and drink for and with others, this is the essence of the readings for the 21st Sunday in ordinary time. To consider these readings from the perspective of Oblate community life opens a threshold into the question niggling at the heart of all community life. Will I decide to live it as a daily fresh communion with others in Christ, or choose to draw life away from community, in whatever ways (and gods) my “former” life held or continues to hold me captive?
There’s a saying we have all heard, “Seeing is believing”. I wear prescription, progressive glasses. Like most people who wear glasses, the struggle is to keep them clean and clear of the smear of the day’s fingerprints and handling. I need to rinse with a glass spray cleaner or with water and suds, and gently wipe with the cleaning cloth provided, preferably several times in a day. Otherwise, by days end, I’m looking through a fog of grease and smears. Seeing through the “fingerprints and handling” makes for headaches and an unclear reading of what’s going on at any given time in the day.
Faced as we are with our daily demons and angels, the ‘crosses’ of living alongside the mystery of others begs the question every day in community life, “Do you also want to leave?”. Jesus is supposedly at the helm, at least in name if not in faith that “the words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life”. We might find ourselves ‘shadow boxing’, rubbing up against each other’s weaknesses in ways that sometimes leaves us empty, lonely, and isolated. Not surprisingly, along with the disciples in John’s gospel, some leave and return to their former way of life no longer accompanying Jesus. The rest of us unenthusiastically answer the question with another question, as Peter did, “Master, to whom shall we go?”
There’s a simple and sure way – though not easy way – to carry on in, with and through Christ. We rinse our lenses for seeing Christ in others regularly throughout each day. We do this by taking time, several times a day to go to the wellspring within, “the word of Spirit and life”, to cleanse the lenses with the breath of Spirit in us, and to see anew. All the rubbing up against others becomes the cloth that cleanses, bringing us to our knees for the word of life within, and we become food and drink for each other. Christ is at the heart of everything.
By Lucie Leduc
