The 9th Word: Gazing upon the beautiful

I love Icons—they are truly beautiful and their gaze is penetrating to the soul of the person. As I pray with them their eyes gaze upon me and I am invited to gaze back. It is a moment of seeing and being seen. We begin to see God clearly because the gaze draws forth the small, the laugh and the hope of love. It is the gaze of a spousal love, a parental love that goes beyond any description.
What God does not want is for us to look at him as some curiosity, something to be dissected. He does not wish us to put him on a shelf like a beautiful knick-knack or hang it upon a wall like a wondrous oil painting. God does not want us to view him through the lens of a camera/cell phone where we can add all sorts of filters and other “add-ons” that obscure and remake the beauty into something we control and construct.
Our Father simply wants us to gaze upon his beauty as he gazes upon our beauty made in His image. Our Father gazes upon our beauty not as static but as an ever transforming in our conversion towards the holy in becoming the saints we are made to be. He gazes upon us through the gift of free will where his invitation is always to return his gaze from the cross.
The gaze is an encounter to be seen and to see like two lovers joining together in life. The gaze that transforms and sees beyond the hurt and enters into healing and renewal of live.
The gaze reminds us of how God is not a check list of prayer to be done but he is “Our Father” who loves us before we were formed in our mother’s wombs.
The penetrating gaze of God is not accusatory, rather it is an invitation to encounter his mercy and love and in this becoming an Icon of beauty.

The 10th Word: A Word of Surprise: What is Love—Adventures in Grace

The million dollar question; What is love? Our Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The answer is so simple that we forget it because we like looking for it in the complicated. The Most Holy Trinity is love.
We discover the answer in the love of family, community. We discover the answer in prayer and the sacramental life. We discover the answer in the service and sacrifice in caring for the other.
It is the search of being faithful to the struggle in the continued search for holiness in our lives and for others. It is the constant refrain of dying to self.
Think of a story of love. Where the husband cared for his ailing wife. Where a mother watched over her children playing in the park. Where two friends sat at a table in a coffee shop talking. It is a little boy tossing a ball up in the air and catching it again and again. It is the tired father gathering his children in his arms to read a story of love. It is the silent child contemplating a bug.