Jun 25., 2009   /   Soul Food

The Gaze of God

July is St. Ignatius de Loyola’s month, so to speak, since we celebrate his feast on July 31.  So much has been written on his Spiritual Exercises and what I would like to share is just a very small aspect of my experience of making it year by year.  I am struck by the method of prayer called “contemplation.”  In prayer we are asked to “contemplate” a mystery in the life of Jesus, for example.  For me, it means to enter into the mystery by gazing on the scene, by listening and looking. Contemplation invites us to gaze deeply and profoundly into the event.  Thus it is not just to look, nor to see but to GAZE.  When one gazes at something, the “gazer” becomes affected by the object of the gaze.  As when one contemplates something happens and the process transforms.

This is what happens in the prayer of contemplation. But often, we get lost in our own contemplation that we forget that God also contemplates us, looks at us.  It is not just me that gazes, it is also God who gazes on me.  In one of my retreats, years ago, I was asked to reflect on Iain Matthew’s book, The Impact of God.  Some of the most beautiful lines of the book say:

“It has been said that a person is enlightened’, not when they get an idea’, but “when someone looks at them.”  A person is enlightened when another loves them.  The eyes are windows on to the heart; they search the person out and have power to elicit life.

So the gospel has eyes which are not dispassionate, nor merely passive.  Their gaze is not an art gallery gaze, wandering from exhibit to exhibit and leaving what they see obviously unchanged.  Their gaze engages what they see and affects it: For God, to gaze is to love and to work favours.  These eyes are effective: “God’s gaze works four blessings in the soul: it cleanses the person, makes her beautiful, enriches and enlightens her.”

The gaze of God affects!  Who can forget Jesus looking at Peter after he denied him three times?  And Jesus looking at the rich young man with such deep love, I often wonder what happened to him in his later years.  Would he remember at some moment in his life  that loving look of Jesus?

Iain Matthews continues: “A person is enlightened when someone looks at them.’  Chaos is enlightened when God looks at it.  The Bridegroom casts his gaze across the face of the abyss and sprays life across it.  This is John of the Cross’ amazing understanding of creation: the universe, each element in it, each event in it, and the web of those events held together – all thought, all friendship, all history – are given being by the eyes of Another, eyes “communicating” being to the world and to the person.  So does St. Ignatius when he invites for example, the pray-er to gaze on the Trinity contemplating the world. It is said that he often gazed at the sky from his window and looked at the stars in the night and his eyes would fill with tears. I imagine he was filled with such awe and wonder at the beauty of the stars that they led him to God, the creator of such beauty.

In this month where we celebrate the feast of St. Ignatius, we ask for the grace of seeing but most of all, of allowing ourselves to be seen – to be gazed at by this God who loves us –and who sees beyond our failings.

Meny Vera-Cruz,rc