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This is my beloved son. Listen to him.
In his book, “Seeing With the Heart”, Father Kevin O'Brien quotes
from that classic children’s novel, The Little Prince:
“One sees clearly only with the heart.
Anything essential is invisible to the regular eyes.”
He goes on to illustrate how that works.
You might remember the beautiful story from the book
and it is probably worth rereading if you have not read it in a long time.
He talks about how the fox and the prince
want to play and become friends.
The fox says to the prince,
“Yes, but you need to tame me first.”
And the prince says, “Why do I need to tame you?
We want to be friends. Why can we not just be friends?”
He said, “Because, if you tame me,
you are going to have to spend time with me learning all my ways.
And then you will become, of all the thousands of boys in the world,
the most important boy.
And of all the thousands of foxes there are out there,
I am going to become the most important fox.
We will know each other and come to be fond and love each other.
That is why you need to tame me.”
In his book, Fr. Kevin goes on to explain how this works.
He maintains that we need to believe first,
then we will see what is not seen.
When we see with eyes of faith, we will see with loving eyes.
When we spend the time with someone, then we start to see sacredness.
We start to see beauty.
We start to see goodness.
That is when we start to recognize the beauty of life,
even as it is right now with all its ordinariness and goodness.
He quotes many different authors.
But I think the one from Little Prince is one of the most beautiful.
I know it is not quite a dog, but those of you who have dogs,
know the time spent training our dogs is a bonding time.
I did that with my dog Bella, endless hours of training!
Bella will do everything for me,
and I will do anything for Bella.
It is the same for you and your children.
The time you spend loving them when they are growing up,
the amount of energy and time you have poured into them,
that you see them differently because of what you have already given them.
And therefore, everything they do, in a sense,
is sacred and beautiful, even though it is not always perfect.
There is a certain beauty to that when it is seen with the eyes of the heart.
We never see things the same when we see that way,
when we see with believing and loving eyes.
For example, when you meet your spouse for the first time,
and you fall in love.
You never see them the same way ever again.
Life is very different after that.
In fact, everything starts to look sunnier after that.
It may only last a couple of months, maybe years but it does last!
And it happens in other ways, too.
It is not just between two spouses.
It is also when we see life and we see something,
then suddenly everything seems to be different.
And when we see that way,
then everything comes to be seen with that new set of eyes.
For example, how could you look up at the hills today
in that beautiful sunny day and not be mesmerized
by how blessed we are today?
And if we have not seen that yet today,
maybe we have rushed here too fast;
we should pause and take a look at the beautiful sun
and take a look at the beautiful sky
and the flowers or just a simple flower in a pavement
and just be amazed.
We see it in today's reading,
we hear about the transfiguration, this famous and beautiful story.
We underestimate the power of the faith of the disciples
as they already have gone up the mountain.
They went up the mountain with Jesus
because they already believed in Jesus.
They did not go up the mountain to see and believe.
It was the other way around.
They already believed.
They went up the mountain believing in Jesus.
And when they saw, they were confirmed in their faith.
And that is our journey of Lent.
Most all of us are not coming into Lent to believe,
but to confirm what we already believe.
We come to believe and then we see anew
and are transformed by that.
Or in today's words, transfigured by that.
And then we see, we see life differently in the most precious way.
But it takes that extra effort.
It takes choosing to believe.
It is not that we do not have doubt.
It is choosing to believe and then we begin to see.
And hopefully when we come from these liturgies each week,
we can come from here and start to see
the love of our spouses in a new way.
Not that they have done anything different.
They have not, but we see differently. Why?
Because we have been renewed with eyes of faith
and renewed with eyes of love.
And because we then see differently
then we see in our spouse and our children,
maybe even our grandchildren.
Or as children, we start to see in our parents,
someone who has always loved us,
who we may not always understand,
but is always there for us.
And we start to see with the eyes of the heart,
that is the renewal we are committed to for this Lenten journey.
It starts with believing.
It starts there, and then we start to see;
we start to see with eyes of belief, then with eyes of love.
And because of that, everything is transfigured.
Everything, every relationship, every rock,
every flower, every sunshine or even the rain, the pouring rain,
we see differently because we have seen with the eyes of the heart.
This is my beloved son. Listen to him.
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