Christ Sees the 'What Could Be'
11th Sunday of the Year
What do you think God sees when he looks upon us?
I think that is a question asked in our Gospel reading for this weekend. I have been trying to come up with an answer to that question and there are two images that have stayed with me the last few days. What does God see when he looks upon us?
The first image is of an artist who possesses a vision for a work of art that remains incomplete. Maybe you have seen the Pieta by Michelangelo before or maybe you have not, but this sculpture of the Blessed Mother holding the deceased body of her son is a masterpiece. The sculpture is enormous and carved out of a single piece of marble; it stands almost six feet tall and seven feet wide. The story goes that Michelangelo knew exactly what he wanted his masterpiece to look like. He could see in that single block of uncut marble all its potential for beauty before he even began the work of carving and sculpting.
There is my first answer to the question. What does God see when he looks upon us? God sees us as incomplete, as creatures of remarkable capacity for goodness and beauty, as uncut blocks of marble waiting to be fashioned into something remarkable. God looks at us and he sees the ‘what could be,’ he sees the ‘what might be,’ if only we would live good lives and strive for perfection.
The second image that has stayed with me is that of home, some place that matters to you, but some place that no longer exists. Imagine that your childhood home, maybe, this place connected with so many memories and relationships and important moments from your life, suddenly disappears. Maybe you moved away at some point, found a new home, and you come back to your old neighborhood one day and discover that this place you once loved no longer stands. Maybe the property was sold off and torn down; maybe there was a fire.
What would you see if you gazed upon that space where your house once stood? I think you would see not what is there in front of you but rather what is missing. You would see the ‘what once was,’ you would see the ‘what ought to be there’ because as far as you are concerned, the home you knew and loved belongs in that space. Just because your home no longer stands, that does no mean that you no longer see the place bound up with so many memories and relationships and important moments from your life. What is missing would be right there before your eyes. You would see the ‘what once was.’ You would see the ‘what ought to be there.’
And there is my second answer to the question. What does God see when he looks upon us? God sees what is missing in us. He sees what ought to exist in us. Maybe we have sinned or become lost or could be living a better life and now when God looks upon us what he sees is the ‘what once was’ and the ‘what ought to be there.’ We can change for the worse, we can go astray, we can become vicious people, and still what God sees in us is not the reality of what we have made of our lives but rather the reality of our lives as he knows us and made us—the what once was, the what ought to be, the what could be, the what might be.
Christ in the Gospel today sees the ‘what once was’ of the crowds; he sees the ‘what ought to be,’ the ‘what could be,’ ‘the what might be.’ The Gospel tells us that Christ sees the crowds as ‘troubled and abandoned,’ but a better translation of the original Greek would give us ‘mangled and cast away, like sheep without a shepherd.’ The dictionary says that to be mangled is to be severely mutilated, damaged, or disfigured by cutting, tearing, or crushing. The lives of those in the crowds are broken down, cut up, hideous. But the ugliness and the hideousness are not really what Christ sees when he looks upon them. Christ sees the ugliness against the deep background of the potential for goodness and beauty of those in front of him. He sees what could be, he sees what ought to be.
And seeing the ugliness and hideousness of the crowds against the background of their potential for goodness and beauty, the heart of Christ is filled with compassion; he is moved with pity for them. Again, the translation of the Gospel could be better. The compassion that Christ experiences when he looks upon the crowds is visceral, it is in his gut, his whole body is moved with pity for the people standing in front of him.
How does Christ respond to the experience of pity and compassion for those in front of him? How does Christ respond to seeing the ugliness and the hideousness of a person’s life against the deep background of what ought to be, what could be, what might be?
St. Paul tells us in our reading from The Letter to the Romans that the compassion Christ experiences for the people in front of him gets him killed. He sees the potential for goodness and beauty in our lives and he dies for us. There is a truth here that I don’t think we give nearly enough attention in our Christian lives: Christ dies for the ungodly; he dies for sinners; Christ dies for people who are mangled and cast away like sheep without a shepherd. Who makes that kind of sacrifice in life? Maybe for a good person, someone who is trying to live a good life, it makes sense to sacrifice, maybe offer your life, to help them. That kind of sacrifice might be difficult, as St. Paul says, but we can imagine someone dying for the sake of a just person.
But who dies for the sake of people living hideous and disfigured lives? Is that the kind of life that you are living? Who sacrifices for those whose lives are cut up, torn down, and crushed by sin and brokenness?
‘Christ’ is the answer that St. Paul gives. Christ dies for the mangled and cast away because the heart of Christ is moved by a visceral experience of pity and compassion. And what I want to say is that the way that Christ sees us matters a great deal. When God looks upon us, he sees ‘the what once was,’ ‘the what ought to be,’ ‘the what could be.’ He sees our ugliness against the deep background of our potential for goodness and beauty. What Christ really sees when he looks upon is what is missing; he sees what we lack. Christ sees the goodness and beauty that might exist in us but does not yet. Maybe because it is a goodness that we once possessed but have lost. Maybe because it is a kind of beauty that we have not yet found. But Christ sees what is missing, what is lacking, what could be and ought to be in us, and his heart is moved by compassion.
The vision of Christ matters. What God sees when he looks upon us matters. From the vision comes the compassion, and from the compassion comes the sacrifice: The work of love, the work of salvation. And the problem for us is that we do not do a very good job of seeing with the eyes of God in our lives. We look at people living broken and disfigured lives and we reduce them to their sin; the sin is what we see. So, we judge, and we condemn, and we gossip, and we commit all manner of sins of calumny and detraction and rash judgment. We do not see what is missing in people, what is lacking, what could be there or maybe what was once there and let our hearts fill with compassion. We see only the disfigured life in front of us, we tell ourselves that we see what we see because we care about the truth and living good lives, and then we wonder why there is such an absence of real, authentic charity in the world today.
There is no real charity in a life that is not moved by pity for the mangled and cast away, and there is no real experience of pity and compassion in a life that sees only sin in the broken and disfigured life of another. Christ tells us that without cost we have received the gift of charity in our lives and so without cost we are to give ourselves over to a life of charity. Is that how we are living? I think too many Christians in the world today have become quite proficient at counting the cost.
I think we can do better. I think we can see each other with the eyes of God, learn to see in one another the ‘what could be,’ the ‘what ought to be,’ the ‘what once was’ and let our hearts fill with compassion and let our lives be governed by the work of real and authentic charity. Just yesterday in our reading from The Second Letter to the Corinthians at daily Mass, St. Paul told us that we are no longer to regard one another according to the flesh. Why? Because the Holy Spirit lives in us and we have become new creations in Christ and if God lives in us then even the life of the worst sinner is like an uncut block of marble that might be fashioned into a work of profound beauty.
If we can see well, learn to see one another with the eyes of God, then maybe we can experience the kind of pity and compassion that Christ experiences in the Gospel. And if we can experience that kind of pity and compassion, then we might just be able to live a life of real charity, sacrificing, giving of our lives, not for only for the sake of the just, not only for those who live good lives, but even for the ungodly, for sinners, for the mangled and cast away. Without cost we have received, and without cost we are to give.
Homily preached on June 18th, 2023, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary