My “word” to you this month comes from the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 2a: Let us fix our eyes on Jesus.

I love that phrase with its implication of a long, steady gaze at the One who alone can bring to perfection our faith journey. The author assures us that only by doing so will we not grow weary and lose heart in the face of our struggles.

For there is something that the victorious Jesus communicates to those who follow him, something that only he can give.

My experience has been that this phrase about fixing our eyes on the Lord often means little to people. It doesn’t seem practical. Even if one understands it not literally but as a figure of speech for an interior disposition, it doesn’t seem very helpful.

Work

Most of us have a million things on our minds. There is work to be done. There are problems to be solved, plans to be made, projects to be carried out. Not to mention relationships to be worked on, communications to be communicated, e-mails to be responded to.

Then there are all the dreams, worries, thoughts, anxieties, and the whole gamut of what goes on in our imaginations over a 3-minute time period. In all of this, what can it mean to “fix one’s eyes” on an invisible Person?

I purposely left one word out of the above list, and that word is “desire.” Yes, we all can lay claim to so many often-conflicting desires. But there is one desire that should be the most compelling, so much so as to predominate over and order all the rest: desire for the Beloved, Jesus Christ our Lord.

This desire is like a fire that burns inside the core of all other desires, purifying them from within. It is born in the fiery crucible of grace, where—somehow, some way—Jesus Christ has won your heart, because you realize in a flash that he has given his life for you.

To fix one’s eyes on Jesus has something to do with returning over and over again to the One who is the source of this grace.

In the midst of a thousand activities and responsibilities, there is a cry that kind of tears you apart: to live everything with Jesus, through Jesus, in Jesus.

Your prayer becomes reduced to the essence of all Christian prayer: the holy Name of our Savior—“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

If, God forbid, this desire turns to cold ashes in us, we quickly become absorbed by whatever is the most potent force currently at work in our lives. This may well include “the world” in the sense of human life as it currently is opposed to the presence and rule of God’s kingdom. It will certainly entail whatever in us is opposed to that heavenly reign.

For human beings by nature become absorbed into something or someone more powerful than themselves, even if it is the tyranny of one’s own untamed willfulness.

Flaming Desire

Only the flaming desire for Our Lord and Savior can free us from the sickly longing for “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

Only Fire overcomes fire. We either go one way or the other!

It is not as nice living in Canada as it once was. Our government is moving inexorably towards recreating the definition of marriage so that it no longer refers only to the sacred commitment of a man and woman to one another before God.

God’s Order

Gradually we are erasing from everyday consciousness the beauty and truth of God’s order as he meant it to be lived.

One of the effects of this movement is a weakening of the perception of Christ as Bridegroom of humanity, wedding his beloved Bride to himself in the fiery love of his Passion.

The human foundations for understanding this most precious of all gifts—our salvation—are thus being attacked and eroded.

Opposition to this movement seems too weak to halt it, at least for very long. It is a sad state of affairs.

If one gazes only at this situation, it is easy, as the author of Hebrews states, to “grow weary and lose heart.” That is why, at this time, it is a most pressing matter for believers to fix their eyes on Jesus—an action which is precisely the contrary of ignoring the difficulties all around us.

Only in his light will we see light and understand what the Gospel will require of us in the coming days. Speculation about the future is rather pointless. It is contemplation of the Beloved which is essential. Pope John Paul II has written eloquently about this in his Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Inuente:

“Is it not the Church’s task to reflect the light of Christ in every historical period, to make his face shine also before the generations of the new millennium? Our witness, however, would be hopelessly inadequate if we ourselves had not first contemplated his face.

“The Great Jubilee has certainly helped us to do this more deeply. At the end of the Jubilee, as we go back to our ordinary routine, storing in our hearts the treasures of this very special time, our gaze is more than ever firmly set on the face of the Lord.” (# 16)

Gazing on Christ

The Holy Father then proceeds to give a meditation on what it means to gaze upon the face of Christ in the Scriptures in an excursus on his life, passion, death, and resurrection.

It is the whole mystery of the Person of Jesus which is the starting point for every Christian response to the historical situations in which Christians find themselves.

In Madonna House we are making an effort to give clear teachings as to where the Church stands on the major issues of our times. We encourage our members to write to our political leaders, urging them to consider seriously the imperatives of the natural law inscribed in all human existence.

We pray constantly for our country, and indeed for the whole world in its struggles and agonies. As responsible citizens, we do not wish to give up on our political institutions or on those serving within them at this time, for we know we are not alone in our concerns.

But one cannot help but feel that for a situation of radical crisis, a radical solution is necessary. The word “radical,” in its essence, means “root”, and we need to return to the roots of our Faith if we are to bear effective testimony to that Faith.

Will not Christ himself reveal to us what is needed if we come to him in a spirit of prayer and humility, begging for the courage to carry out what he commands?

Do you not hear at this time the cry of Jesus from the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mt 27:46).

As a priest, I hear this cry often, though perhaps not phrased in those exact words. I have come to realize that the root of much of the moral disorder of our times is that people have never known the loving presence and protection of God as Father.

This is a sickness of soul that is very widespread, and it can lead to all kinds of disordered dispositions and activities: bitterness, despondency, anger, confusion, loneliness, fear, lust, sexual perversity, addictions. The list seems endless.

Sometimes when I look into a person’s face and listen to the cry of his heart, suddenly it is as if that person recedes for a moment, and I see the One Man crying out from his bed of pain, which Catherine Doherty loved to call the “marriage bed” of God and mankind.

When that happens, I know that I am called to simply “stand” there, with Our Lady, in that place with her Son living in this person before me.

The Father’s Word

With her, I pray for the moment when I can speak, perhaps, the Father’s word of truth and love that alone can call to life: “Jesus is with you in your agony.” “Let go of your bitterness.” “Repent, and believe in the mercy of God.” “Put an end to this war against yourself and others.” “Forgive your parents.” “Rebuke the spirit of despair.” Or simply, “I love you, and I pray for you.”

Bearing Witness

It is my conviction that if we believers contemplate, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the face of “Christ abandoned” in the Gospels, we shall “see” how to bear witness to him, “abandoned” in our brothers and sisters in these tragic times.

Will this mean bearing a lot of hostility? Probably! Will it entail long hours accompanying a brother or sister in his or her agony and confusion? Certainly!

Will it mean rejection and ridicule by certain ones, with the ensuing call to go before God in prayer and fasting for our enemies? Very likely!

New Millennium

In short, the New Millennium is a most challenging time in which to live, one in which “witness” and “testimony” may well merge again with the more original term: “martyrdom.”

Out of all of this will come forth God’s answers for today’s questions.

In the coming months I hope to offer more reflections from this beautiful and tranquil House facing the Madawaska River.

The roots of loving sacrifice have gone in deep in this place over the years. This loving sacrifice is a noble path to follow for those who seek to hear the voice of the Beloved on the winds of this new and mysterious “springtime” of the Church which the Holy Father talks about with such eloquence.