The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. We, who walked in darkness have seen a great light. And that light is the face of Christ.
Do you remember the first time you saw him? I mean really saw him. Do you remember the first time you saw the Lord Jesus with the eyes of faith?
Maybe it was when you were a little kid, and your grandmother told you that Jesus, through whom you were made, was in that little white host and that fancy gold cup that the Priest was holding on the Altar. And with the faith of a little child, you looked up and saw him.
Caryll Houselander once described that moment so well in her book Mass for the People, written way back in 1942. She wrote:
“Slowly, exactly, Father O'Grady repeated the words of Consecration, his hands moved in Christ's hands, his voice spoke in Christ's voice, his words were Christ's words, his heart beat in Christ's heart.
“Fr. O'Grady lifted up the consecrated Host in his short, chapped hands, the server rang a little bell, the sailor, the handful of old women and the very old man bowed down whispering "My Lord and my God" and the breath of their adoration was warm on their cold fingers.
Father O'Grady was lifting up God.”
As with the eyes of faith, every innocent child and old faithful woman and man looked at that white host and gold Chalice and saw God, Jesus, their Lord and their God!
Maybe that was the first time you saw God.
Or maybe the first time you were with the old sick lady or that guy who lived on the street or that person who really needed you. And you consoled them and wiped their sweaty brown, or fed them as they gobbled it down hungrily, or dried their tears as they cried about how hard their life had become. And maybe when you looked behind their tears or between the wrinkles of their wizened visage you saw Jesus, smiling back at you.
Maybe that’s the first time you saw his face.
Or maybe it was after that time you had really messed up, and your life was in a shambles, and you had cried through endless nights of dark despair. Until, in a dazzling moment of blinding light, someone forgave you, God absolved you and you were overwhelmed, drowning in a gratuitous mercy that you never could have deserved. And way down deep in your broken heart, now overcome with healing love, you saw his face, maybe for the first, but certainly not for the last time.
And suddenly, you were like Isaiah, so aware of your littleness set against the infinity of God’s glory. Your grubbiness, set against the the purity of seraphims praising the holiness of God. And, like Isaiah, you cried out: "Woe is me, for I am doomed!…a man of unclean lips…”
We hear today of the first time Andrew and Peter saw Jesus. He was walking by the sea of Galilee, when he caught sight of the two brothers casting a fishing net into the sea. “Come after me,” he yelled to them, “and I will make you fishers of men.” “At once they left their nets and followed him.”
That first calling of the disciples reminds us that Jesus always sees us before we catch sight of him, for is through him that we were made and through him that we were knot together in our mothers’ wombs.
Imagine that, if you will…how before your parents or grandparents were even born, God knew you…by name. He knew the beauty of you, the talents of you, the accomplishments you would enjoy. He knew the sins you would commit, the darkness you would cling to and the evil to which you would surrender yourself. He knew you better than you will ever know yourself, and still he loved you.
He knew you and still he became a weak little baby for love of you. He knew you and still he suffered the passion of the cross for you. He knew you and still be gave his life, his last breath and drop of blood for love of you. Before you had learned to say his name, he knew you and he loved you still.
Which is why it is an old and pious tradition to meditate on the last time you will see him in this life, with prayers for a happy death. What will it be like the last time you will see him in this life? Perhaps it will be in that little white host as viaticum, the Bread of Angels received for one last time. Or perhaps it will be in the eyes of that person whom you had never forgiven to whom you will show mercy with your dying breath. Or perhaps it will be in the absolution which will still your dying heart, the peace you will know when you make your last confession.
What will it be like, the last time I see him in this life?
I do not know. But I do know that no matter when it was that I first caught a glimpse of his face, no matter how it will be that I will catch a last glimpse of him, I know that when I walk through that door from this life to the next, I will be ‘welcomed into the light of his face.’ The face of him through whom all things were made, the Alpha and the Omega who died for me, who sought me out whenever I was lost and with whom I long to live in the glory of his perfect love for all eternity.
