The Face of Christ Is Seen in What Is Below
18th Sunday of the Year
In his wisdom, Solomon considers all that is—everything under the sun—to be nothing but vanity. All that one can see and touch is, according to the literal meaning of the Hebrew word he uses, only ‘vapor’ or ‘smoke’. Solomon’s assessment of reality, indicative as it is of his keen insight into the nature of things, is in fact shared across the board by people of different ages, cultures, and religions. Even today in a secular and vastly materialistic world there is general agreement, at least at the level of intuition, that whatever there is is not forever. Those who pursue material goods such as wealth or property sooner or later find the latest this or that to be insufficient and arrive, usually through much frustration and angst, to the point of Solomon’s wisdom to see that the whole quest for material gain is a quest to catch vapor or smoke; in other words, that all is vanity. With such perspective those who have accumulated much within their barns either put the goods they have acquired at the service of the less fortunate or imbibe them according to the counsel of the rich man in the Gospel to “eat, drink, and be merry.” In either case, they agree with Solomon that the world is nothing but vanity.
Yet the wisdom to recognize vanity is not afforded only to the rich. Even those whose barns are filled only with what their allowances and minimum wage salaries can buy are no less perceptive to it. During the past week, I served as chaplain to a camping trip with about 75 teenagers from several parishes within the Archdiocese, and the conversation in those days revolved around what we called the “2 a.m. question” that keeps us all awake at night from time to time: Is there more to life than this? I found it intriguing that these teens could grasp, even without having much of their own, that whatever there is isn’t actually all that much.
It stands to question, however, that if the capacity to see the world as vanity falls to both believers and non, to both rich and poor alike, then is such a natural disposition in fact compatible with the new horizon given by Christ and the life to which he calls his disciples? To see nothing but vanity is to deprive all meaning and worth from the world and thus ends logically in nihilism. And nihilism by consequence forces one to treat reality either as only existing for one’s exploitation and pleasure with which to eat, drink, and be merry or as altogether not worth living as the remainder of the biblical saying goes, “for tomorrow we die.” We should ask whether either attitude is appropriate for the Christian to adopt. I think not, for neither hedonism nor defeatism, nor nihilism itself, is condoned, much less encouraged, by the Gospel.
What is missing from Solomon’s wisdom— partial but incomplete portion of divine revelation that it is—is the light thrown upon reality by Christ that the Holy Spirit enabled Saint Paul to see in fuller view than he did Solomon. Paul exhorts the Colossians to “seek what is above.” And while this pursuit of higher things necessarily requires that we “put to death” what is in us that is “earthly”—something only possible if we consider what is earthly to be but vapor or smoke—the light of God’s full revelation of himself and his plan of salvation for the entirety of creation unveils that all that is earthly will, in the end, find its completion and perfection in Christ who will be all in all. Without Christ what is earthly can only be seen as smoke and vapor; within Christ what is earthly takes on a new finality—a new purpose and a new destiny. The Gospel, therefore, does not allow the Christian to consider the world to exist only for his own pleasure or as completely meaningless, for the world is destined as is the Christian himself to become one with Christ so that Christ at the end of history will be all in all.
On this feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the insight of the French Jesuit priest and scientist of the 20th century Pierre Teilhard de Chardin proves helpful to illustrate the importance of the centrality of Christ. Teilhard wrote, “There must be found in the world about us, not only the expectation, but the very face, already to be recognized, of a Universal Personality. Nothing less will do… to preserve the accumulated powers in the heart of the individual, of societies, of the world itself, from completely going astray.”[1] Seeking the face of Christ in the world saves us from considering the world to be only vanity and thus using it for our pleasure or discarding it as something useless and meaningless to us. By the gift of faith we are given an elevated vision to see what is above reflected in what is below: to see the imprint of Christ’s face upon the pattern of the universe, in the beauty of all creation, in the people who bear his image, and even in the material goods that fill our barns. And this Christic vision of what is around us spares us from the nihilistic agony and the hedonistic void that are the results of a vision of a world in which beyond it there is nothing else. For the vision of faith enables us already to anticipate the full vision of glory in which we will see and only see Christ as all in all.
The vision of the end of all things in Christ trickles down and saturates every level of our being in the world—a world that reflects the face of Christ. For this is the what the Gospel demands—to be rich in what matters to God—to store up in our hearts everything that is good, true, and beautiful as mattering to God for it bears within it the very image of Christ. As Christians we are called always to seek his face, to listen for his voice, to search for him in even the most unlikely corners of the world, for even that which appears to be most removed from him is, in fact, deeply imbued with his presence.
As the teenagers on our camping trip grappled with the question Is there more to life than this? I found myself asking instead: Is there really this much? And this, I think, is the question that we as Christians should be asking about reality. Is there really this much? Can the immense majesty of the mountains or the intricate splendor of a flower truly bear the image of its Creator? Do my friends with whom I both laugh and cry in fact wear the face of Christ who with us rejoices and weeps? Is it possible to see his face and hear his voice in and through everything I experience in the stillness of the wild or the bustle of the city?
Despite however tempting it may be to conclude the contrary and to see the world as vanity full stop, our faith in Christ demands that we answer yes. There really is this much, and this much is the stage upon which God reveals himself to us and invites us and all he has made into an eternal relationship with him. And it may be the case that the darkness too often covers our ability to see, and our blindness toward the truth of reality may tempt us to despair and to take shelter in the barns filled with the vain things of this world. Yet God will not cease to pursue us. In the poetic words of another Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”[2] His grandeur will flame out to grab our attention, to lift our eyes to see through what is earthly into what is heavenly, to glimpse the face of Christ. We need only to keep our eyes open to be receptive to the gift of the knowledge of his presence in the world that faith allows us to behold.
When we have seen the face of Christ even for a brief instant, our lives cannot remain the same. For when we have found him in one corner we will look for him in another and in all the rest. Faith will move our heart to seek his face and listen for his voice in the recesses of every time and place that we would see—ever as in a mirror dimly—how he is already present all in all in the world that he has created and how being there, he draws this world of smoke and vapor into the eternal embrace of his love by which it was made and redeemed and is called to find its rest, with us, in him.
[1] Quoted in Henri de Lubac, “Teilhard de Chardin in the Context of Renewal,” Communio 15 (Fall 1988), 365.
[2] Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”.