Lately I have been looking back at photos
from recent trips and some from years past. I enjoy this traveling back in
time. This practice helps me tickle a memory awake and see again what I might
have rushed through when I originally snapped the picture.
The opportunity to see again helps me count
the blessing of a moment beyond what was captured by the camera. Each image
emerges as a line in a poem or in a story. Sometimes I am also surprised by
what I see in the photo that was not the focus at the time. With this comes the
recognition that we don’t always see everything that stands before us.
Alexandra Horowitz, in her book On Looking:
Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, notes, “The world is wildly distracting.” We
simply can’t take it all in, so we learn to see without really seeing. She
adds, “Expertise changes what you see and hear, and it even changes what you
can attend to.”
Consider your own focus from day to day.
After a long weekend, we often have to refocus ourselves on our work and the
week ahead. Where your focus lies determines what you will see. Consider as
well that our lens can get blurry as we proceed on autopilot or in a rush, and
we may not always see what stands in front of us.
Lent, which calls us to spiritual growth as
we walk together as community to Easter, helps us pay attention to where we
point our lens. During this Lenten season, we can refocus our eyes on our faith
life, on the people in our lives and those in need; and on the blessings we
sometimes take for granted.
Pope Francis in his Message for Lent said,
“Lent summons us, and enables us, to come back to the Lord wholeheartedly and
in every aspect of our life.”
In essence, it helps us focus, look more
closely. It’s healthy to pause from the rush that can take us off track. Bishop
Mario Avilés, who led a Lenten Retreat for our diocesan staff in February,
cautioned us to be mindful of what we do and what we see. We have to be
careful, he said, with thorns on the path that can choke our faith life and our
relationship with others.
Speaking about the reality of sin, Pope
Francis reminds us in his Lenten Message, “In order to confound the human
heart, the devil, who is ‘a liar and the father of lies’ (Jn 8:44), has always
presented evil as good, falsehood as truth. That is why each of us is called to
peer into our heart to see if we are falling prey to the lies of these false
prophets. We must learn to look closely, beneath the surface, and to recognize
what leaves a good and lasting mark on our hearts, because it comes from God
and is truly for our benefit.”
Almsgiving, one of the spiritual practices of
Lent, provides us as well with an opportunity to see through another’s eyes, or
through their perspective to gain a better understanding of what others might
be dealing with.
In his homily on Ash Wednesday, Bishop Daniel
E. Flores emphasized that during Lent we walk together towards the Cross and
the Resurrection. To walk together, he said,
means we are connected to each other. Those connections are deep and
imply some responsibilities to one another.
While the grain of the world has always been
individualistic, Bishop Flores said, the clarion call of the Lenten season is
to be people of mercy. Mercy is being able to respond to the person in need
next to you, just as Jesus responded.
Ultimately, Lent is about refocusing our
lives as Christians upon the connections we have. Starting with prayer, he
said. “Prayer connects us to God. If we aren’t praying and asking God for help,
how can we be of any good and use to anybody else?”
Bishop Flores added that almsgiving is
“recognizing that what I have is not just for me alone, that I have a
responsibility to use the goods that God puts in my possession for the good of
other people.” It is “about that sense of giving of yourself, not just about
material things, but of the time you have, and the support you give each other.
He advises us to more conscious about how we treat each other, starting with
family and friends.
The Holy Father tells us as well, “Love can
also grow cold in our own communities.” He reminds us, that in the Apostolic
Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, he “sought to describe the most evident
signs of this lack of love: selfishness and spiritual sloth, sterile pessimism,
the temptation to self-absorption, constant warring among ourselves, and the
worldly mentality that makes us concerned only for appearances, and thus
lessens our missionary zeal.”
By focusing on the people in our lives, we
can prevent love from growing cold in our communities, and it might help us see
something we might be missing. We might also try to see through another
person’s perspective – an elderly family member or someone in our community in
need.
As we begin to pay more attention on where we
focus our lens, we may gain a better vantage point to recognize and appreciate
the everyday moments in our lives, and maybe to see with the eyes of a child
and their sense of wonder. Consider too the value of looking with all our
senses, not just our eyes.
Indeed, Lent is a time for fasting,
almsgiving and prayer. It is also a time to count our blessings. How often do
we thank the Lord for the graces in our lives?
(Originally
published in March 2018 edition of The Valley Catholic newspaper)
