Today’s Gospel passage from Luke is about how perplexed Herod became about the identity of Jesus. We hear of people telling him that Elijah has arisen, or the great prophet has come back. He immediately thought about John the Baptist, whom he had beheaded. He was confused, yet interested. He couldn’t see Jesus, but as the passage ends, “And he kept trying to see him.”
You have to ask, “What kept him from seeing Jesus?”
Like so many of us, the veil that covered his eyes was composed of the effects of his sin. It was composed of unneeded preoccupation with things of this world. It was composed of a heart that had not been purified, for we hear in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.”
Like Herod, we too keep trying to see Jesus, and we must ask ourselves, “What blinds me to his presence? He is here, right now, yet I so often do not recognize him.”
Let us rid ourselves from whatever obscures our vision of God. Is this not, ultimately, what life is all about? It is only with the eye of faith that we see the Lord Jesus, and believe me, you are going to find him, see him, touch him and hear from him in the lives of the poor, in the words of Scripture, in the teachings of the Church, and in clinging to the deposit of faith handed on to us by those who have gone before us.
God is never stingy in his grace and his assistance. He really wants us to see Him, and to see Him clearly and for all eternity.
