LENT WEEKDAY 05 01 – Year II
Seeing As Jesus Sees:
Optional Memorial of St. Isidore
(Dan 13:1-64; Ps 23; Jn 8:12-20)
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The story of Daniel and Susanna today can be compared to yesterday’s gospel of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery. In so doing, we see the contrast between Old Testament justice and the new level of justice brought by Jesus – in which there is no violence.
The gospel today invites us to put our faith in Jesus as the light of the world, and to live by that light of love and total non-violence.
Ron Rolheiser gave a talk at the LA Congress on the congress theme of “To See.” He commented on how we have difficulty seeing accurately (two witnesses of the same event will have different accounts of it), and also seeing deeper meaning in what we see. We tend to stay on a superficial level.
He then provides 10 different ways of seeing the reality we face each day. One of the ways he mentions is to move from seeing with the eyes of hunger to seeing with the eyes of gratitude. Another is to move from seeing with the eyes of bitterness, to seeing with the eyes of gratitude. The gist of his talk is that to have the light of Christ within us, is to see reality as Christ sees it.
In his run-in with the Pharisees who refuse to believe in him, because they are stuck on seeing with the eyes of possessions, prestige and power, Jesus tells them where his authority comes from: he knows where he has come from, and where he is going; whereas they do not.
In the end, Jesus has to tell the Pharisees that they really are unable to see the truth about God, and in fact, do not know the Father at all. That leads them to want to arrest him, and do away with him, but they are restrained from doing that “because it was not his hour.”
His hour, as was also mentioned at Cana, was his passion, crucifixion and resurrection. That was truly the hour when evil seemed to be victorious, but was ultimately totally defeated in the end.
Today we honor St. Isidore, who was born of a noble family and was the brother of three saints: St. Leander of Seville, St. Fulgentius of Cartagena and St. Florentina. He served as archbishop of Seville for nearly 40 years and was recognized as the greatest teacher in Spain. He presided over councils, was a progressive educator and a prolific writer. He compiled an encyclopedia, a dictionary, treatises on various subjects and wrote a history of the Goths, which remains our only sourcebook for much of Visigothic history. He died in 636 and was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1722.
The Eucharist is a celebration of the justice of God, demonstrated by the totally non-violent way Jesus handled evil directed toward him – with forgiveness, mercy and compassion. May our celebration fill us with the light of the Holy Spirit that inspired Daniel, and was embodied by Jesus.
