A Cage or a Lens: Seeing with the Eyes of Christ
By John Graveline, Director of Parish Life
March 15, 2026
“All I know is I was blind, and now I see.”
John 9:25
Faith, Seeing, and Vision
On this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we continue our triptych of Gospel readings from the Gospel according to St. John as we prepare for the celebration of the Easter sacraments. This weekend, we hear proclaimed Jesus’ healing of the man born blind, emphasizing Jesus as the Light of the World. I have shared with you some reflections recently on the meaning of light, so today I will invite us to consider this passage from the perspective of the man who has been healed on the importance of vision.
In his book And Now I See: A Theology of Transformation, Robert Barron writes, “Everything in Christian life flows from and circles around the transformation of vision. Christians see differently, and that is why their prayer, their worship, their action, their whole way of being in the world have a distinctive accent and flavor.” Faith is not merely a matter of reciting the Creed at Mass or memorizing catechism answers, assenting to a series of beliefs formulated as propositions. It is our wholehearted response, at once intensely personal and radically communal, to the God who loves us and has revealed himself to us, a response that transforms our way of seeing the divine, ourselves, our neighbors, and all of creation. Origen of Alexandria, a revered teacher and mystic in the 3rd century, defined holiness as seeing with the eyes of Christ, and the great medieval theologian St. Thomas Aquinas referred to heaven, the ultimate destination of the journey of the Christian life, as and experience of the “beatific vision” of God.
“Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart/Naught be all else to me save that Thou art/Thou my best thought, by day or by night/Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.”
Ancient Irish Poem attributed to St. Dallán Forgaill
A Cage or a Lens?
There are two ways of living in a faith tradition. One is as a cage; the other is as a lens. When faith is lived as mainly following a set of religious rules which we attempt to observe through our own willpower (even if those rules are good and true), it is like a cage. Inevitably, we hit against the wall of either falling to our own disordered and selfish desires or we become frustrated when religious tenets seem to come into conflict with each other. We can begin to look around with envy at others who are doing the things that, deep down, we would like to do (often without seeming to experience bad consequences!) or with judgement at those who do things differently than we do, giving rise to anger and resentment. This attitude blinded the religious leaders of Jesus’ time to seeing the heal ing work that God was doing, making them suspicious. Pope Francis referred to people in this spiritual state as “sourpuss” Christians. When faith is lived as a lens through which to better see the reality of God, ourselves, neighbor, and creation the way that God sees them, we become humble, patient, and oriented toward love.
What Faith Reveals
What does faith reveal to us about reality? That God and all of creation (including all human beings) are good gifts from a God who is love. I was blessed to study under Dr. Kenneth Schmitz, a great philosopher and author of the book The Gift: Creation. He would teach us that our lives come down to one question of vision: Do I see everything as a good gift from a loving God or do I see everything as just “stuff,” raw material to be used and consumed in an indifferent universe? How we answer that question has vast implications to our spiritual health, how to address the problems of society, and for the care (or lack thereof) for our human and natural environment.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
The spiritual writer Richard Rohr speaks of seeing with the eyes of Incarnation, all created beings as an outpouring of God. “Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to anyone who looks deeply.” Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus shows us definitively what love looks like. As Pope John Paul II taught, “Human beings cannot fully find themselves except through a sincere gift of themselves.” (see Matthew 20:28) With these lenses of Christ’s Incarnation and Pascal Mystery, we can see reality “in wholeness, not just in parts” and see the underlying solidarity of all creatures. Do I see the immigrant, the stranger, our unborn sisters and brothers as primarily a beloved gift of God or primarily as a threat? Is my primary mode of living one of acquisition and consumption or one of gratitude, stewardship, and generosity?
Training Our Vision
A highly recommended way to train our vision to see with the eyes of Jesus that our Catholic tradition gives us is the practice of Examen. Examen is a daily prayer practice where we take 10-15 minutes of our day to recognize that we are always in the presence of a good and loving God, to thank God for all his gifts and blessings, to review our day asking God to reveal to us where God was present and active, and to ask God’s mercy on the times we failed to love. The Examen prayer concludes with the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer given to us by Jesus himself. This practice forms our hearts in gratitude and generosity, developing the eyes of our hearts to awaken to God’s presence and call to receive his love and share his love each day.
I recently saw this quote from Henri Nouwen on Fr. Joe’s coffee mug which to me sums up what it means to see with the eyes of faith, “My deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.” My prayer for us all this Lent is that we allow Jesus to heal our vision so that we can see more clearly how to love God, ourselves, all people, and all of creation in a more holy and holistic way. May ours be the cry of Bartimaeus, another blind man healed by Christ, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! I want to see.” (Mark 10:46-52)
John