It is a profound spiritual experience to contemplate our loved ones with the eyes of God and to see Christ in them. This demands a freedom and openness, which enable us to appreciate their dignity. We can be fully present to others only by giving fully of ourselves and forgetting all else. Our loved ones merit our complete attention. Jesus is our model in this, for whenever people approached to speak with him, he would meet their gaze, directly and lovingly (cf. Mk 10:21). No one felt overlooked in his presence, since his words and gestures conveyed the question: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mk 10:51). This is what we experience in the daily life of the family. We are constantly reminded that each of those who live with us merits complete attention, since he or she possesses infinite dignity as an object of the Father’s immense love. This gives rise to a tenderness, which can “stir in the other the joy of being loved. Tenderness is expressed in a particular way by exercising loving care in treating the limitations of the other, especially when they are evident”. (#323)
Shortly after my heart attack a few years ago, while I was recuperating, my mom was down to take care of me as I got back on my feet. I remember one afternoon, I was reading in my chair and I looked up and saw my mom staring at me very intently. She was, as Pope Francis writes in Amoris Laetitia “present…giving fully of ourselves and forgetting all else.” I was at that moment meriting her complete attention, not for anything I could or should do for her but simply because I am who I am, I understood the gaze of Jesus. It was an unnerving feeling to be honest with you. It was the look of love we discover when we choose not to possess but be possessed by the greatest love.
I see this look of love many times as a priest…from the groom as he sees his bride enter the church for their marriage. I have seen it when the mother sees her husband tenderly hold their child. I see it in the shared look of the husband and wife in moments of laughter, joy, sorrow and suffering. I witness it the moments of dying as a husband caresses the hand of his wife or as a wife wipes every drop of spittle from the mouth of her beloved spouse.
Most tenderly, we experience the love in the embracing the limitations of our beloved in the moments of forgiveness, reconciliation and unity. This is the true beauty of marital love and the growth of love in the family. We are invited to look deeply into the beloved and embrace their limitation, to love them for who they are not who we wish them to be. It is the invitation to conform our soul to gently, tenderly and lovingly surround the beloved in the holy embrace of the sacramental grace we receive from God.
At times, we fool ourselves into thinking it is impossible to give this generous and abundant gift of love…I think we are wrong. What is harder for many of us is to accept and receive the gift of this generous love given. We fall for the temptation of thinking we are unworthy of this great love and choose to accept something much shallower and less gracious, worldly pleasures rather than holy and sacred love. It is when we do not accept the great love of God, believing in the dignity of our body and soul that we often cheapen our hopes and dreams of true and everlasting love.
When I met my mother’s gaze I truly met the gaze of Jesus for a brief moment and experienced what so many received and continue to receive in meeting the gaze of our Lord. The challenge we share is to not only see with the eyes of Jesus but to allow our hearts to be seen with Jesus’ eyes in the gaze of the husband and wife, the mother and father, the boyfriend and girlfriend, (friends etc… even our enemies) seeing, cherishing, and accepting the dignity of love we have been created to be and to live in the world.
God Bless
Fr. Mark