In the early
1990s, my sister lived in New Zealand and worked for a traveling science
roadshow. We talked on the phone rarely. It was too expensive, and the voice
delay on oversea phone calls was really frustrating. My sister began sending
postcards to keep us current on her exciting adventure. One postcard stands out
in my memory from that era. On the front of the postcard, there was a
stereogram, a hidden 3-D picture wrapped in a blue-green 2-D design. The
instructions on the postcard said to hold the image right up to your nose and
slowly pull the picture away from your face. The reader was told to stare
through the picture rather than try to focus on the 2-D pattern. “Let your eyes
go beyond the obvious image, and you will begin to see the hidden image,” the
footnote read.
I raised the card
to my nose and tried it about ten times. My children figured it out almost
immediately.
“I give up. I
can’t see a thing!” I tossed the card on the table and my son picked it up,
imploring me to give it another try.
“You have to let it happen, Mom. Don’t look at it.
Kind of let your eyes go out of focus. And fight it when your eyes want to look
at the design. You’ll never see it that way. The picture is deeper. Not here.”
He rubbed the palm of his hand across the postcard. “It’s there.” He took his
right index finger and pointed down to the postcard in his left hand. When his
finger touched the picture, he slid it around the side of the picture, and kept
on pointing to an imaginary place beyond.
He handed the card
to me, and I took it reluctantly. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I thought
about what my son had said and gave it one last serious effort.
And suddenly, I
saw it. Three dolphins. Three 3-D dolphins in a row. It was SO cool.
There are times
when the indelible mark of God on the lives of those around us can seem as
elusive as the 3-D picture hidden in a stereogram. We don’t see Christ in our
neighbor. We don’t see Christ in the poor. We don’t see Christ in the priest.
We just see a rude
neighbor. A guy on the side of the road with a sign. A man with foibles like
everyone else who sometimes wears a stole.
God tells us to
look closer. No, not at the surface. Don’t fixate on the outward patterns.
You’ll never see what lies beneath that way. Jesus is there, and you can see
him if you let yourself get past the surface image.
He’s there, in the
eyes of your neighbor.
He’s there, in the
eyes of the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the immigrant.
He’s there in the
ordained one. A priest forever. Marked with God’s indelible imprint.
Sometimes, the
pattern on the surface throws us off. We become frustrated by what we see. God
tells us to look a little deeper. Give it another try. True identity is
sometimes hidden. Cloaked in external trappings.
And if we can
begin to see Jesus Christ hidden in the faces around us, maybe we can begin to
see Our Lord hidden under the appearance of bread and wine.
Fight it when your eyes want to look at the
design. You’ll never see Him that way. Christ is deeper. He’s there.
No longer bread.
No longer wine.
Jesus.
Soon, we enter the
“Year of Faith.” It’s time to put on the eyes of faith and see Jesus Christ.
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