Gazing at Jesus

John 14:9

Jesus answered, "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

During the long silence that followed the reading of John 14:1–14 this morning at St. Cuthbert's, I found myself wondering exactly what Jesus meant when he said that anyone who has seen him has seen God.

In Exodus 33:20, God tells Moses that no one may see God's face and live. So gazing at Jesus, we are able to gaze upon what would otherwise kill us. Looking at Jesus, really seeing him, is a way to pass down an otherwise deadly corridor; a way to reach the true, eternal, mysterious, awesome, hidden Source of Life.

What actions, then, do I feel God calling me to take?

1. Gaze more often at Jesus as he is described in the gospels ... read the stories; imagine what it would be like to take part in the scenes; consider how Jesus might be calling me to change.
   
   I did this more often while I was going through the Ignatian Exercises, and I miss it. Taking a slow, careful look at Jesus is transformative. He is fascinating.
   
   
2. Exercise the discipline of watching for Jesus in his distressing disguise in the faces and lives of the people around me. Matthew 25:40 comes to mind; the people who need something that I am called to give are Jesus.

First Principle and Foundation

What is the bottom line? What is my bottom line?

Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
At peace, in peace
And at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
At home, at home in the house of the living,
Sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
Yawning at home before the fire of life
Feeling the presence of the living God
Like a great reassurance
A deep calm in the heart
A presence
As of the master sitting at the board
In his own and greater being,
In the house of life.

—D.H. Lawrence

To be found

Luke 15:8–9

Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, "Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin."

This Sunday's scripture is one I pondered a few years ago when my spiritual director assigned it as part of the first week of the Ignatian Exercises. I wrote this poem during that time and just revised it.

My fevered search for the lost shiny coin
that was God Who Made Sense:
Light the bright lamps of the mind!
Sweep the corners of reason!
Empty the pockets of theodicy!

What work!

At last work wears out
and I fall exhausted on the floor
and lie flat and deathly
and the silence makes room for a question:
Is the story about the woman's search—
not mine
but hers?
her fevered search for the lost shiny coin
that is me?
She calls for lamps,
She sweeps the corners,
She empties her pockets....

And what more can a coin do
(small, flat, and round
lost in dust under a bookshelf
or the kitchen stove)
but lie there
and hope like anything that the woman
driven by love
will never call off her search?