Blessed Sabbath and Saturday, dear digital neighbors across the internet! This morning’s reflection comes from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s collection of aphorisms, The Grain of Wheat. I first encountered von Balthasar in the late ’80s and have appreciated his works ever since—even if they are a bit on the heavier side for my tastes. Still, I’ve always found them worth the effort and patience.

I often think of the gaze of God, especially the day-to-day encounters people had with Jesus. There was a quality to His glance that was immensely welcoming—and perhaps a bit off-putting at the same time. This man—this wanderer, rabbi, miracle worker, and maybe even the Messiah—actually sees me. He gives me His undivided attention and focus. To those longing for deliverance, those eyes brought healing and wholeness. To the fallen angels consumed by their pride, anger, and envy, His glance was terrorizing. They could not stand to see the One they had betrayed and abandoned. His glance made them recoil; His voice silenced and banished them.

His eyes see us. They strip away all the illusions of self, and we fear that all He will see is how broken, how selfish, how sinful we are. He does see that—but that is not all He sees. He sees the good hidden beneath our frail humanity. He sees the future with Him that we cannot even begin to imagine. That glance is powerful enough to make individuals leave their former way of life and follow Him. He is the lover of the unworthy and the One who transforms their lives from the old dross of drudgery into a new venture of discipleship. Not only do we learn to love His gaze, but there is the promise that we too may begin to see things the way He does. Well, enough of my rambling—off to the meat of the morning reflection! Happy Saturday, my friends!

Holiness consists in enduring God’s glance. It may appear to be mere passivity to withstand the look of an eye; but everyone knows how much exertion is required when this occurs in an essential encounter. Our glances mostly brush by each other indirectly, or they turn quickly away, or they give themselves not personally but only socially. So too do we constantly flee from God into a distance that is theoretical, rhetorical, sentimental, aesthetic, or, most frequently, pious. Or we flee from Him to external works. And yet the best thing would be to surrender one’s naked heart to the fire of this all-penetrating glance. The heart would then itself have to catch fire, if it were not always artificially dispersing the rays that come to it as through a magnifying glass. Such enduring would be the opposite of a Stoic’s hardening his face: it would be yielding, declaring oneself beaten, capitulating, entrusting oneself, casting oneself into Him. It would be childlike loving, since for children the glance of the father is not painful: with wide-open eyes they look into his. Little Thérèse—great, little Thérèse—could do it. Augustine’s magnificent formula on the essence of eternity: videntem videre—“to look at him who is looking at you.”

Eye - Nathan Defiesta - Unsplash