Faith and Vision…
(from a September 5, 1982 homily)

There was a woman who had been blind from birth who got her sight back by a surgical operation some years ago.  She spoke about her life since then, saying she still wakes up each morning with a great thrill and a sense of great joy and wonder at the beautiful colors of things and their fascinating outlines.  She never grows tired of looking at things as if each time it is a pure, new experience. . .

Some of us have had the experience of being converted to the Catholic faith, and whether a slow or sudden experience, it was something very vivid because we were coming into the light out of a long darkness, and we were amazed at the things we saw and heard and were able to talk about to God.  [Editor’s note:  Fr. John Keep was himself a convert to the Catholic faith.]  The influx of faith was as stunning as any miracle of healing for the deaf or dumb or blind.  Faith is just as wonderful a gift as that, even if because we have had it all our lives, or because we came to it slowly, we were never actually dazzled by it.  We ought to wake up every morning full of joy and wonder, not because the sun is shining or there is beautiful music in the air, but because we know that God is with us.  I wonder how often we really stop and think and realize what a remarkable and delightful thing it is that God is with us, God Himself in all His beauty and light and love and goodness and attention to us. . .

Perhaps our faith is not as bright or alert as it should be.  We may have lost our first fervor or our earlier enthusiasm.  Blessed are the eyes that see the things that we see and the ears that hear the things that we hear!  We must use our eyes and ears and speech in the Kingdom of God.

If our faith is weak or unsatisfactory, one reason for this could be . . . [that] there is something wrong with our attitude to other people.  St. James tells us a rather surprising truth, one which we probably have never realized before. . . He says that we cannot combine faith in Jesus Christ, our glorified Lord, with the making of distinctions between classes of people.  There are many types of discrimination:  racial, social, educational, religious, and so on. . . We discriminate between people who are pleasant and those who are unpleasant, between those who are useful to us and those who are not.  We treat some people better than others and some worse than others.  We give time more readily to some than others.  We are more ready to meet some than others.  [In all of this] we . . . damage our spiritual perceptions and weaken our faith if we do less than we reasonably can to help, encourage, improve, cheer up, and benefit everyone we meet.  If we treat each person as well as we can, then we are free from discriminating against anyone.
           
Spiritual reading, mental prayer, and above all taking part in the Liturgy are ways of growing enormously in closeness to God and in holy joy, but the spiritual sight and hearing and power of speech that God has so wonderfully given us through Jesus Christ become seriously damaged if we treat any people without the respect that is due them and which God Himself gives them.  The blindness we have in this matter is amazing in most of us.  When a stranger comes to the door, we sum him up almost at once according to his appearance, and we treat him accordingly.  If, on the other hand, we looked at him with the sight God has given us, we should see the image and likeness of God in him and treat him as well as everyone else.  In fact we should treat him as well as we can, always.

It is so easy to be blinded by the outlook of this world, to be deafened by its judgments and to ruin our speech with its ideas and mannerisms.  Yet God has come to us and He is here. . .

Faith is a gift from God to us.  If we live by faith, everyone who meets us will find that we ourselves are a gift from God to them.  Jesus is God’s gift to us, and if we live His life, we are a gift to mankind and to each person we meet.  Let us try to behave like a gift from God whom He has given to each person we ever meet.


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