Seeing with spiritual eyes
By Father Bobby Barbato, OFM Cap.
St. Francis of Assisi is known for his radical following of Jesus Christ. He did not do this alone, but as a part of the Church. Central to his Catholic faith was his belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist. He did not write many things, but in his writings the theme of the Eucharist is very strong. In these months I would like to reflect on three themes from the writings of St. Francis of Assisi concerning the Body and Blood of Christ.
When I was growing up and hearing about Jesus and His followers, I thought how much easier it would be if we, like the Apostles, had Jesus right in front of us, to teach us and help us to live His words. Maybe St. Francis of Assisi thought the same thing too, yet as this quote from one of his teachings (called the Admonitions) shows us, he realized that Jesus gives us the same opportunity and challenge as He gave to His earliest followers: to see beyond what our senses tell us to find the presence of God in our midst.
While our faith is based on a historical reality, the real life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in a certain place and a certain time, we also know that we are not called merely to honor these historical facts or simply admire Jesus from afar. He promised us in so many ways to be a living presence in our midst. He said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Mt. 18:20)
St. Francis realized that merely seeing Jesus’ bodily presence was not enough. Many had seen Jesus during His earthly ministry and yet had not believed. Pontius Pilate not only saw Him, but spoke with Him and heard Him declare, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (Jn 18:36) Yet Pilate in the end did not see the Son of God there in front of him.
The Apostles had to learn how to see Jesus not only as a human being but also as the Word made Flesh. Despite such events as the Transfiguration and Jesus’ miracles, it took them a long time to see the reality of who Jesus was. As St. Francis says, they had to learn to look on Jesus with “the eyes of the Spirit.” It was this Spirit that Jesus promised to send down upon His Church, the same Spirit which guided the Church not only from its earliest days, but throughout the ages.
In a very real way, the sacrament of the Eucharist is the way the Lord invites us to see, in our own day and age, “with the eyes of the Spirit.” We are invited to look with faith on the elements of bread and wine and believe that they really become for us the Body and Blood of Christ. In the Eucharistic prayer at every Mass, we call down the power of the Spirit to transform the elements. We ask to be able to see with our minds and hearts that what appears unchanged really is the sacramental presence of Jesus Christ.
What does our faith in this sacramental presence mean? That we are called to see the presence of God in our very midst. It calls us first of all to believe that God really sent His Son, that in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we truly see the work of God. The Eucharist calls us to know that Jesus’ passion is not just a past event, but that His suffering, death and resurrection are present among us and call us into deeper faith in God’s presence in the world, even in its pain and anguish. It was the same Jesus that Francis encountered in the Blessed Sacrament who also came to him in the embrace of a leper.
We cannot force ourselves to have eyes of faith. We have to call upon the Holy Spirit to help us to see, to train us to look for God’s presence in our midst. We have the example of St. Francis and St. Clare and many other holy men and women who invite us to trust in God and open ourselves to the work of the Spirit.
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Word really was made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. From the moment of His conception, Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. Mary our Mother can help us to see with new eyes. She pondered in her heart the mystery of God revealed in her Son Jesus. She believed even when she was in anguish as He died on the cross. She was also with the Church when the Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost. I know that our Mother beheld her Son with great love when He came to her and the rest of the Church in the sacrament of His Body and Blood. We can ask her help to see truly the presence of her Son, Jesus Christ, in the Blessed Sacrament, in the Church and in the world that God so loves.
Father Bobby Barbato, OFM Cap. is the rector or the National Shrine of St. Francis.