A homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023
Acts 2:14, 22-33, 1 Pt 1:17-21, Lk 24:13-35
I watch a fair amount of cable TV, primarily news, and with the programming come the unavoidable commercials, mostly for medicines and the like. You know the ones: They start off by listing the one or two benefits of that particular snake oil and then rattle off the 10,000 possible side effects that include painful death or dismemberment, significant gain or loss of weight, or terminal halitosis.
(And have you ever noticed that the actors playing some of these couples’ children are biologically inaccurate, if not impossible?)
Easily three-quarters of the ads fall into a category I call See or Be Seen, and a good chunk of those have to do with eyes. Bulging eyes. Dry eyes. Itchy eyes. Bloodshot eyes.
For those of us who have eyesight, seeing is nearly everything. Almost every modern human activity revolves around sight. We couldn’t drive a car or ride a bike or even watch those creepy commercials without it.
Seeing gets us thinking.
According to the esteemed scientists who study these things,
The brain is one of the highest energy-demanding tissues of the human body. Comprising only about 2% of the body weight, it consumes 20% of the total oxygen and about a quarter of the total glucose used for energy supply. Within the brain, the visual system ranks amongst the highest energy-consuming systems.
And seeing gets us believing, as we were reminded during this Easter Season by the doubt of Thomas, called Didymus.
Whereas thinking gets us believing when we ponder things we have not seen or cannot see, also as discussed with Thomas.
And our brains are getting a workout, the scientists say.
But are seeing or thinking enough? Are our brains getting the right kind of workout?
Seeing is essentially passive. We open our eyes; light is reflected onto the rods and cones in our eyes and some nerves are stimulated; impulses are relayed to our brains, which then interpret the data and trigger recognition or thought.
Seeing is having visual information fed to us.
Seeing is letting visual information wash over us.
Looking, though … ah, looking is active. Looking adds focus and discernment — thinking brain stuff — to the absorption of visual information. Looking means our brains are telling our eyes to search for something specific, to see with a purpose.
Do we spend our lives looking, or merely seeing?
More than once I’ve been someplace and been greeted by a friend whom I did not expect to see there, and had to shake off that moment when I didn’t recognize them away from the setting where we’d usually meet.
I saw, but I didn’t see, because at that moment I wasn’t looking. It was yet another road to Emmaus moment that all of us have experienced.
It served — and can continue to serve — as a reminder that we, as people of emotional intelligence and spiritual maturity, live our fullest lives when we live by making active choices in everything we do.
By observing the world God has created. By looking and thinking and acting.
Are we looking for a way to help someone in need, using the gifts and talents and abundance God has given us to elevate the lives of the downtrodden?
Are we looking for injustices to set right?
Do we see the least among us? Do we see the crosses they carry?
Are we looking for Christ in our lives?
All we have to do is look for his footsteps and walk in them. He’ll be alongside us every time we do.
His companionship is our strength and wisdom.
