Feelings and opinions often obscure our perception of truth
Scott, my mom, and I went to the mall. We split up and promised to meet back at the food fair. When the time came, Scott and I started looking for my mom in the crowd.
“There she is,” I said, pointing to the right.
“What? Where?” Scott asked.
“Right there! I’m pointing right at her. Mom!” I tried to wave her over.
“Colleen, are you pointing at that person over there?” Scott asked me.
“Yes, for Pete’s sake. At my mom, right there!”
“Uhhh, Colleen, that’s a man, and he’s Chinese.”
At that moment I realized I needed glasses. My vision was most certainly skewed.
I believed I was looking at my mother and that my husband was foolish for not seeing what I so obviously “knew.” Had I followed through on my feelings I just might have driven home with someone quite different than my actual mother. I mean, he was a man after all, and Chinese!
Is it fair to say that poor eyesight has become a bit of an epidemic? Or that we’re wasting our time waving at the wrong guy? Honestly, I think the world has gone a bit mad.
I know that all of history has its portion of madness; war and scandal, irreligious and heretical Catholics, pain and poverty. Still, I can’t help but feel that our times are somehow different. In times past, scandal was at least acknowledged for what it was. When sin happened it was talked about in hushed voices. Today, sin is a deplorable word.
To call something sin might make someone feel bad, and that would be unacceptable. I see it even in the Church. Our vision is blurred, and we have become more concerned with making people feel happy than with people knowing Love.
We talk of social justice, but as hard as it is to hear or say, leading a soul to Christ is of more import than leading a body to water. Does that make us feel uncomfortable?
The Church’s job is not to make people feel happy, or to solve the social problems of the world. The Church’s job is to save souls.
As individuals we must take up the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy and bring comfort to those in need. That is the work of the laity.
The overall work, mission, and calling of the Church is truth and salvation, even at the expense of hurting people’s feelings, and then we walk together on the sometimes hard road to salvation.
I am getting tired, in a completely hypocritical way, of all the “this is how I feel,” and the “this is what I think” and the “in my opinion.” I don’t think truth asks for our opinions. If truth depended on our vision, then we’re in big trouble, because I’m guessing that, like me, most of us aren’t scoring 20/20.
Marriages are falling apart. Babies and the weak are being killed. Catholics, living a life of paganism on the weekdays, still expect to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, that they don’t even believe in, on Sundays.
And we all just smile and nod, because, well, maybe what we see as true isn’t what they see as true. Has any of this hippy-dippy relativism succeeded in making people happier? If so, then we’re walking happily into hell.
I make no claims at prophecy. I am simply a mother who looks, and who watches the world. I see a snare set for the souls of my children. My purpose, and Scott’s purpose, is not to see them happy, but to see them saved. God help us. God’s Church help us.
This salvation will surely not give them the temporary happiness of a self-indulged soul. It will give them eternal joy. But first, they must learn to look and to see with a clarity that is absolutely not feelings-based.
Advent is a time of waiting and watching. We will only recognize Him if we look through the right lens. Christ did not come as a nice humanitarian. He came, lying naked in His mother’s arms, in a cold, harsh, dirty stable.
He came, our Suffering Servant, to lead us on the narrow way, through the eye of the needle, and to the cross that our feelings would never choose.
The important question, this Advent, is who or what are we looking for? Will we have the eyes to see Him when He comes?
“Isaiah says, ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’
“But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear” (Mt 13).
