Do You Want to See God?
4th Sunday of Lent (A)
N.b.: This homily is based on the Year A readings for the 4th Sunday in Lent, which are used with the scrutinies of the catechumens preparing for Christian Initiation at Easter.
More than once as chaplain to a grade school have I found myself in the extremely disadvantageous position of trying to convince an insatiably curious mind that all we can really say about heaven is that in heaven we will be with God and we will see God. What about trees? Will there be trees in heaven? What about my dog? Will I see my dog? You mean to tell me all we’re going to do is sit around and look at God? Boring! Not worth it! The idea that in heaven we see God might appeal to the interests of a second grader, but beyond that, all bets are off. Even among adults, this can also be a hard sell. If you were to ask anyone on the street whether they would like to see God, at worst they think you’re crazy and at near-best they’d give you a cautious Yes. But when you explain that they’d be looking at God forever, they would walk away faster than you can say Thomas Aquinas. And if we are honest with ourselves, the idea of seeing God eternally might not mean to us as much as we would like to think. For if we believed, as Thomas Aquinas teaches, that attaining the vision of God would truly satisfy our every desire and leave no room for wanting anything else, we would never again give sin as much as a second thought, and we would live every moment of our lives striving to attain that promised vision. But as it turns out, we are not all that different from the insatiably curious school kid or the skeptical agnostic on the street. What separates us, as disciples of Christ, is that we should at least want to want the vision of God for ourselves. How do we go about provoking that desire within us?
As ever, our thinking about God ought to be formed by the Bible, and the theme of seeing God is found across the pages of Scripture. In the book of Exodus, God reveals himself to Moses while hidden in the burning bush atop Mount Sinai whereafter God gives to Moses the law. After receiving the law from God, Moses asks to see God, “I pray thee, show me thy glory.” God, however, responds, “I will make all my goodness pass before you… [but] you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live” (Ex. 34:19-20). He has Moses hide in the cleft of a rock and, as it were, blindfolds him, so that Moses cannot see God as he passes by. “Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (v. 23). After this encounter, when Moses comes down from Sinai, his own face becomes so radiant from being in God’s presence, that Moses must now cover his face when he speaks with the people, as something of the glory of God has passed over onto Moses.
In the story of the Bible, Moses is a unique figure, never to be repeated until he is fulfilled in Christ. Moses did not see God’s face, but he still reflected his glory. No one after Moses will even come close to his sanctity. Israel becomes aware of their sin—the turning of their back to God—and thus become aware of their need of salvation. For this reason, there emerges within Israel a cry from the people to see God’s face. The Psalmist writes, “Thou hast said, ‘Seek ye my face.’ My heart says to thee, ‘Thy face, LORD, do I seek.’ Hide not thy face from me” (Ps. 27:8-9). A priestly prayer of the Old Testament asks for the blessing of seeing God’s face, “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord show his face to thee, and have mercy on thee. The Lord turn his countenance to thee, and give thee peace” (Num. 6:24-26). Seeing the face of God in the Old Testament is equal to salvation, and thus a cry to see God’s face is a cry to be saved: “Restore us, O LORD God of hosts! Let thy face shine, that we may be saved” (Ps. 80:19).
On the surface, seeing God might not seem all that attractive; but if seeing God means being saved by God, then it suddenly gains great and necessary value. Salvation is, in a sense, the most fundamental desire of our being. We are daily confronted by our futility and our finitude, unable to do or to be what we want. We find ourselves at odds with God because of our sin and unable to set things to rights because of the distance between us and him. We find within ourselves a yearning for lasting fulfillment that exceeds the limited possibilities of our nature. What we want is to be saved; and the Bible teaches us that wanting to be saved is wanting to see God’s face. To the extent that we become aware of this desire for God—for eternal life that consists in seeing God face to face—then we will strive all the more earnestly to attain it.
All of this has been to make the point that there is nothing arbitrary in the Gospel about Jesus healing a man born blind. Having been born blind, this man could never see. In himself, he represents the whole of humanity, unable to see God, because God to that point would only show his back and kept always his face hidden. But in this Jesus, at long last, God has shown us his face. Paul writes to the Colossians, “He is the image of the invisible God” (1:15). Now, with the saliva of his own human body mixed into the dirt of the earth his own hands once made, the God who turned his back on Moses rubs clay on this man’s eyes and this man—standing for us all—sees the face of God. God’s face is shown and salvation has come, as the Church recently taught, “The good news of salvation has name and a face: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” (Placuit Deo, 8).
Although God has shown us his face in Christ, he has, in a way, also hidden himself once again. By ascending into heaven, Jesus no longer walks around this earth as he did two thousand years ago. He remains ever-present with us, but his presence is still mysterious. And thus, the cry of the Old Testament remains our own: Show us thy face and we shall be saved. We must still search for him, call out to him, and beckon him to visit us, to remove our blindness, and grant us the gift of his salvation. This, as ever, is the substance of all of our prayer.
If we think of heaven as the moment the man born blind regained his sight, it should not be difficult at all for us to desire it. Not only did he see light for the first time with the eyes of his body, but he saw with the eyes of heart the light of the world, shining upon him in the face of Jesus Christ. That is what is promised us in heaven, and nothing less. Let us strive in these final days of Lent for it. And let us rejoice that, even now, Christ our Lord once again comes to visit us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, to remove our blindness, to give us the grace of seeing him in faith a bit more clearly, and by that sight advancing us along the way to salvation.
Homily preached March 10, 2024 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen