How Is Our Sight?

 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As I do every year, I got my eyes checked recently.  Amazingly enough, my prescription is actually getting better as I get older, which is nice to hear.  I took the opportunity of my check-up to also get new sunglasses.  I had some Ray-Ban wayfarers for a while, so I wanted to go with something a little different.  I had seen cool sunglasses with colored, reflective lenses, so I decided to go with a pair of those this time.  
    After a couple of weeks my new sunglasses came in.  My last pair just made the entire world darker (as all the sunglasses I have had do).  My new sunglasses slightly dimmed the world, but more so changed the colors as I looked through them.  It was a bit strange at first, but I have gotten used to it, and I think I can even see better with these new sunglasses.  
    When we hear today’s Gospel, we probably focus in on physical sight.  Jesus healed the blind man, Bartimaeus, so that his eyes could function again and he could see.  But the Bartimaeus’s faith, his eyes of faith, we might say, were functioning fine.  After all, Jesus tells him that his faith has saved him.  So the Bartimaeus must have been able to metaphorically see clearly with his eyes of faith that Jesus could do what the man wanted him to do.  And the Bartimaeus’s faith was rewarded with the restoration of his physical sight.  
    Through Jesus’ eyes, He could see that Bartimaeus had faith.  Probably everyone else, or at least most others, though that Bartimaeus was cursed by God, or that he must have done something wrong.  That’s what is assumed in John’s Gospel with the account of the man born blind whom Jesus heals.  But Jesus saw that Bartimaeus had faith, and was not cursed.  Jesus saw the world with different eyes than everyone else.
    Do we see with the eyes of God, or the eyes of the world?  How do we look at what is happening in our parish, our city, our State, and our world?  Do we see it only from an earthly point of view, or from a heavenly point of view?  In our first reading, the prophet Jeremiah, who had foretold the exile of the people from their land, now prophesies that God will make things better.  In the eyes of the world, the Jews were simply a weaker nation that was being conquered by a stronger nation.  But through God’s eyes, the Jews were reaping the consequences of not being faithful to Him and worshipping false gods, of not protecting the poor, the widows, and the orphans, and of putting too much trust in physical buildings.  God allowed them to go into exile so that they could understand that their false gods would not help them, and that caring for each other, especially the most vulnerable, was part and parcel of being God’s Chosen People.  
    But God wouldn’t allow their downfall forever.  Jeremiah prophesies that God will restore His people, heal the lame and the blind, and console the Chosen People as their loving Father.  Probably most nations thought that Israel would be gone forever, but God promises to bring them back and heal their wounds, which is what happened.
    In order to keep some sense of sanity, I stopped watching the TV news last year in November.  I would get so worked up by all the things that the news wanted to focus on, and I was losing my interior peace.  I still skim stories on the internet to see what is going on in the world, but I no longer tune to watch news programs.  Even with just the internet news, the world can seem like a fairly rotten place.  Our country and world seem more divided than ever; there are real struggles going on in the day-to-day life of everyday people.  Some goods are in short supply.  I recently read that the cost to heat homes could be higher than it has been in some time, and I know I’m paying more to fill up my car’s gas tank than I have paid in some time.
    That’s looking at reality with the eyes of the world.  I can see all of the external realities.  But I have to try my best to also see the world as God sees it.  What is God trying to do through all of this.  Is there a lesson that I need to learn from all that is happening now?  Maybe what seems like the end is simply the consequence of previous choices, but is also the opportunity for something new.

   I think about St. Augustine on his death bed in the year 430, and the changes he saw in his lifetime.  The Church in North Africa had been one of the gems of the universal Church.  Alexandria in Egypt was an intellectual center for the Christian world, and the name of the city was used like we use Oxford or Cambridge now.  Cyprian, an earlier bishop of Carthage, was a great martyr and theologian.  Monastic life had thrived, and all had gone well for around a century.  
    But the Vandals started to enter Roman Africa early in the 400s, and by 430 they had basically conquered it all.  In fact, though they had besieged Hippo in 430, they left after Augustine died, only to return again and burn most of the books, except those that Augustine had reserved.  After the Vandals came the Muslims, sweeping across northern Africa and taking over.  And the Church in North Africa was never the same (in fact, Christianity is still illegal in Egypt today).  
    Augustine likely wondered what God was doing.  He had been quite faithful, and yet things still fell apart.  But, Augustine trusted in the plan of God, and knew that things would be alright.  They would not be the same, and still are not, but they would be as God would allow them to be.  The key for Augustine was remaining faithful to God, and praying to God for guidance and for mercy as much as he could.  Ironically (for this homily, anyway), St. Augustine is the patron saint of those with sore eyes.  He can be prayed to when our eyes (especially the eyes of faith) are not working as well as they should.
    Our parish, city, State, and country are not the same as they were ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years ago.  We have new challenges now.  But God has a plan, and our call is to remain faithful to God, continue to turn to prayer, and ask God to see, not only with the eyes in our head, but with the eyes of faith.  St. Augustine, pray for us!