Seers in a Blind World (Nazareth Journal, Summer 1997)
[The following homily was given during the closing Mass of the Second Panamerican Conference on Family and Education in Toronto, May 30, 1996. It is based on 1 Peter 2:9; Mark 10:46.]
We are "a people set apart", called by God out of darkness into His wonderful light. We are a people with a difference, a "peculiar" people, as another version says, a people with a purpose. We are different, and cannot be afraid to be different, to so many about us. We are different not in the sense that we blindly persist in going the wrong way, even trying to convince others to change direction and come with us. We are indeed going in a different direction to the vast majority around us. And we don't mean to change course because we are going the right way: not just the way to Heaven, but the way of making sense of, and finding happiness in, this world. We see, others don't. We are "seers" in a blind world.
Our seeing cannot make us proud, though it should make us thankful because it is a gift of God. Therefore, we must offer humble thanksgiving and petition for persevering responsibility. If we were not grateful, we would certainly lose our zeal and perhaps eventually lose our sight. Darkness seems to be invading this world of ours and reaching our very families. And we have come together not to lament the darkness but, in these days of Pentecost, to renew the light in us and around us.
The tonic of our reflections has not been the rebuttal of error so much as the refreshing of ourselves in the splendours of the truth. While a critical appraisal of what is wrong is necessary, it cannot lead us to a negative attitude towards others, but to one of understanding, of affection, of wishing to help. It is important to recall the saying: "Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth." We see, we must see where and how (though not always why) people have gone wrong, and pray to be able - not so much through argument and dialectics, but through prayer and sacrifice, example and genuine friendship - gradually to draw them towards the light without expecting them to understand immediately. We must be prepared for resistance or hostility, but we must not give up.
Bartimeus. Joy was lacking in his life. It was a joy that he sensed in others, especially in those who were passing by, who had met Christ and had chosen to follow Him and make Him the companion of their way. Bartimeus could not see Jesus; it was the joy of those following Jesus that awakened his interest and brought him, blind from birth, to sight and a new life.
Joy attracts. Bartimeus could only hear that joy. People around us have the right not just to hear our joy, but to see it lived in practice.
When the Pope in Familiaris Consortio speaks of indissolubility of marriage, he calls it "joyful news" which it is the responsibility of Christians to bring to the world. He preaches it, and people sense he is convinced, but they remain skeptical, and would remain skeptical even if the Pope's teaching were faithfully and fully echoed, as it should be, by all the bishops and priests in the world. People need to see that joy of unbreakable love lived by married persons. You have to give a living testimony to this truth, just as you are living witnesses to the joy of fruitful married love.
But remember a point always made by Blessed Josemaria Escriva: our joy must have its roots in the Cross. Joy based on the Cross. Is this not a gloomy approach? Why should the Cross be gloomy? What is the Cross but being generous? And is generosity a gloomy virtue? It takes an effort as everything worthwhile but it is the very condition of happiness. Only the person strong and humble enough to be generous can be constantly happy.
Then there's that other great aspect of marital commitment that people don't see today - the joy of children. Not seeing it, they deprive their love of life and the shared sacrifice which is necessary to keep it joy fully alive. You are helping them see it. Many young people today are blind without knowing it. They don't see the joy of committed love, of fruitful love. Show it to them. God has led you into the wonderful light of his teaching about the family; spread that light, make it shine around you.
How can you do this? Through prayer and the sacraments and with regular spiritual direction. By turning your whole life into constant friendship and conversation with Our Lord, so that each aspect of it is lived in His company and friendship, in conversation with Him. Then all your contacts and relations with others will be Jesus passing close to them in their lives. The simple, natural, sacrificed testimony of your mutual love in its faithfulness, of your children in their ups and downs and happiness, and of your happiness to be dedicated to your family, will provoke reactions in those around. People will be struck, surprised, outraged, puzzled, interested; and eventually - so many of them - brought to an underlying desire to be able to live so, to discover the secret of how to do so; to a perhaps unconscious and then a conscious prayer: Lord, may I see.
Light pierces darkness, joy conquers sadness. "Goodness" as St. Thomas Aquinas says, "is stronger than evil." Good is infinite, evil, limited; though it often seems the other way round. The powers of evil thought they triumphed over good when they crucified Jesus. Yet this was His way of conquering evil and saving the world.
Love itself was nailed to the Cross and, so it seemed, died for a moment (in its Humanity, not in its Divinity) and then rose again. Our belief hinges on resurrected love. You too will be conscious of the daily resurrections in your own life. Through your married and family life, marked by the joyful cross, you will be God's instruments for the resurrection of new life, new hope, new sight for so many.
I am sure we were all forcibly struck by a phrase in the Pope's message read to us by the Archbishop in the Cathedral the other day: the Church today is making a "preferential option for the family." It is a new phrase for me, the first time I have heard it. If this conference had done no more than evoke that expression from the Holy Father - which consecrates a whole new epoch in the Church's mission, in your and my mission - it would have been more than worthwhile.
We know the ambiguous way in which the "preferential option for the poor" declared by Paul VI in Puebla in 1968 was used by some. Let there be no ambiguity in our understanding and courageous living and presenting of this programme that God through the Pope is offering us.
Elsewhere in the Gospel we are told of that occasion when Jesus came back to His home town, Nazareth, where He had grown up within the Holy Family, that model and Patron for all of you. There He preached, knowing that His preaching was to be initially rejected: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are bruised" (Lk 4:18).
The preferential option for the poor. This means a preferential option for the family. Where there is no family, rich and poor are poor. Our mission is to show forth in our lives the demanding but beautiful gospel message that can enrich all. It consists in avoiding - or gradually healing - so many broken or bruised hearts, showing people the way out of captivity into the glorious freedom of God's children, helping them recover their sight so that they can realize the growing darkness in which they have been living and be drawn towards God's wonderful light.
Jesus is passing by and we are walking with Him. As He talks with us, as we listen and talk to Him, He awakens a new hope and joy in our hearts. Then the blind around us hear and are drawn by our joy, though they cannot yet understand its source or its root. Let us keep on going, walking, working, always with Jesus. He will give us strength and cheerfulness. Through us He will stir the blind and give them sight, leading them out of darkness into His light and truth and love.
Courage! Animo! "Coraggio", as the Italians say. The Lord - and His joy; and Mary, our Mother and Cause of His joy in us - is with you.