Christ Hidden From The World
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found,
was blind, but now I see.
“Christianity is a way of seeing,” I was told again and again by Fr. Bob Barron as a seminarian at Mundelein Seminary. The longer I have walked the pilgrim journey that all Christians must, the more my vision has changed. There is a joy that comes in finding previously undiscovered areas where Christ has always been present, but also a sadness in my own spiritual blindness that has kept me from seeing Him. It is often unsettling to realize that Christ is still present on this earth and we could very well fail to recognize Him. My own sense is that He is often at home among the poor and forgotten of this world. Even though I fail daily in this task, I know that God doesn’t allow our failed attempts to get in the way of his continual call to treat everyone we meet, as if they were Christ in disguise. With this in mind, I would like to share part of a homily written by John Henry Newman entitled,Christ Hidden From The World:
We are very apt to wish we had been born in the days of Christ, and in this way we excuse our misconduct, when conscience reproaches us. We say, that had we had the advantages of being with Christ, we should have had stronger motives, stronger restraints against sin. I answer, that so far from our sinful habits being reformed by the presence of Christ, the chance is, that those same habits would have hindered us from recognizing Him. We should not have known He was present; and if He had even told us who He was, we should not have believed Him. Nay, had we seen His miracles (incredible as it may seem), even they would not have made any lasting impression on us. Without going into this subject, consider only the possibility of Christ being close to us, even though He did no miracle, and our not knowing it; yet I believe this literally would have been the case with most men. But enough on this subject. What I am coming to is this: I wish you to observe what a fearful light this casts upon our prospects in the next world. We think heaven must be a place of happiness to us, if we do but get there; but the great probability is, if we can judge by what goes on here below, that a a bad man, if brought to heaven, would not know he was in heaven;–I do not go to the further question, whether, on the contrary, the very fact of his being in heaven with all his unholiness upon him, would not be a literal torment to him, and light up the fires of hell within him. This indeed would be a most dreadful way of finding out where he was. But let us suppose the lighter case: let us suppose he could remain in heaven unblasted, yet it would seem that at least he would not know that he was there. He would see nothing wonderful there. Could men come nearer to God than when they seized Him, struck Him, spit on Him, hurried Him along, stripped Him, stretched out His limbs upon the cross, nailed Him to it, raised it up, stood gazing on Him, jeered Him, gave Him vinegar, looked close whether He was dead, and then pierced Him with a spear? O dreadful thought, that the nearest approaches man has made to God upon earth have been in blasphemy!
Newman goes on to say that sin destroys our spiritual senses so that we are unable to see God the way we are meant to see Him. The good news is that God provides us with ways to sharpen our spiritual senses while we are still here preparing for heaven. Tools such as prayer, fasting, and performing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy are all ways of improving our vision now, so that when our pilgrimage in this world has ended we will be able to see clearly in the next.
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