In this section you can find a daily commentary on the Gospel of the Day.

Friday 17 July 2020

Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Word for today
The Gospel of Matthew 12:1-8

Looking with the eyes

The Pharisees could only look with their eyes. They were acute observers, pedantic controllers, but they could see nothing. Why is that? Because looking only with one's eyes was not enough, it is never enough. Looking with one's eyes is only useful to confirm and consolidate one's own prejudices and beliefs. Looking only with one's eyes is like being blind, it is looking in the dark, it is being obscured intellectually and spiritually. The people who only look with their eyes do not look to understand, to comprehend, but only to take aim and to shoot at their target. The people who look only with their eyes do so always and only to shoot to kill. 
The Pharisees' eyes were always staring at Jesus. They were always staring at Jesus when He announced the evangelic procedures in public places, when He was having dinner in the homes of His friends, when He was healing thousands of sick persons along the seashore, when He stopped  the violent storm on the lake, when He was hugging sinners, and rasing people from the dead. They followed Him everywhere, even into the wheat fields. The Pharisees' eyes were on Jesus, but not to understand, to comprehend, to open their heart and mind's eyes, but only and solely to take aim and shoot, to shoot and destroy.
Jesus looked to comprehend, to love, to understand, to hug. His looks were different  and they produced different consequences and actions. Looking only with the eyes is the cold and satanic look of the law, courts, judgement, condemnation, obligation. It is the look of a person who takes aim to shoot and destroy, even if invariably in the name of God, justice, or safety. It is the look that God and Jesus' disciples do not know. Looking to understand, to love, to comprehend is the kind of look that God knows, the look that Jesus used every moment and that the Holy Paraclete inspires. Jesus explained the abyssal difference between these two way of looking when he literally said: If then you knew what this is, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the non guilty. Lord of the sabbath [of every law, duty and principle] is the Son of Man.