Life is Perspective

Recently heard about an interesting psychological study that these researchers carried out. They basically had these group of individuals come to them and they wanted to test, they gave them these physical disfigurements in their face through makeup and cosmetics and whatnot. And they wanted to see, just making them unattractive, how did it affect them in their day-to-day experiences in life. They told them the goal was to let them experience what it was like to live life without that pretty privilege. Speaking of having not any pretty privilege, it's true I did get a haircut. I offered my locks into the Lord and was sacrificed, but my mom still thinks I'm pretty, so I'm still got that. But it was interesting, so they used this makeup to alter their appearance and then they're going to have them go in these other rooms to do these interviews and they're also mixing with other people who haven't been altered, right? And so they want to see how does each one compare to the other in their own experience of going in there. And they showed them an image of themselves in a mirror and then they took the mirror way, when they're halfway through. So then they're like, okay, we're going to just do a little more scarring over here and you know, some blemish over here, whatever. And what they're actually doing after they showed them the mirror, the reflection is they took away all of their scars, all the cosmetics and actually made them look just as beautiful as they were when they came in. But they didn't see themselves, so they all walked into these interviews with the understanding that their face was somewhat disfigured. And they asked them, you know, so what was your experience in these different interviews and interactions that you had? And across the board, the ones who went in there without being disfigured said, they were really nice, they're very kind and I don't know if I'll get the job, but you know, it was a good experience in general. Every single person who thought that they had the disfigurements on their face came back saying, I felt discriminated against, I felt like I was treated uglier than I've ever been before, they didn't, they wouldn't even look me in the eyes. They had all these experiences that they said they'd never had before, when objectively nothing had changed on their physical appearance. What does this tell us? We see the world far more according to how we understand ourselves than the objective reality. And it's very easy for us to project into the world and onto others what we ourselves see about ourself and about life. Life isn't just objective, life is very much colored by our perception of it. And that, in one word, tells you everything that you need to know about this victim culture that America has been pushing for so long. That's not my point of this homily, but when you have everybody in the news and around you in schools telling you that you're a victim for one thing or another, that's going to paint your entire perception about how you are viewed, even if there's no objective basis on that. We do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we see ourselves. So life is very much more about how we interpret events that take place rather than the objective data that is there. And we see this in the first reading in Ecclesiastes, you know, it's a beautiful book and it's a meditation on the passing nature of all things in life, everything's vanity, everything's moving towards death, everything's being passed on to somebody else, whether it's your wealth or your possessions or your power, your loved ones, it's all passing away. But it's a very negative view of history and of life. And I think it's really important that we understand who wrote Ecclesiastes, who wrote it, Solomon, one of the wisest men, he was a king, he was given more money than anybody else. He had like 800 concubines, he had power, riches, everything, but he was a sinner. He was a man that was chosen by God, but at some point he'd fallen away from God. At some point he had given his heart to false gods and he'd actually led to dividing the whole kingdom because of his own sins. And a man who has lived the life of sin looks back upon his life and projects what he knows has been in his heart that whole time, which is vanity. The life of sin, it burns and consumes everything. Things does not come from sin. Nothing of fruit or goodness comes from sin. It only seeks to divide and destroy. So when Solomon is looking back on his life, he's only seen this division and this emptiness. Why? Because that's how he lived. Does it make sense? The saints did not look at their life that way. The saints looked at their life with praise and thanksgiving for everything that God had done through the midst of it, even in the midst of their sins and their failures. Because their heart was pure. Blessed are the pure heart for they shall see God. When we have a pure heart, we see God as He is and we see His grace working through all things. I was at the death of a man one time he was in his 90s. His wife had died just like a year before that and he was surrounded by his like 11 kids and he had dozens of grandchildren by this time he was 62 years married. Do you think that he was on his deathbed saying vanity, evanities, everything is empty and meaningless? He was so filled with joy and thanksgiving for the life that he lived. He was so filled with thanksgiving for all of his children around him and he just kept saying to me, "I've lived such a blessed life, God has been so good to me." He was a man, he was a saint, a holy man. So we see our life not always as it is but much more according to where we are, according to our own dispositions. I think in a sense that image of those people going in front of the mirror and being told what they look like, it can serve as an image of prayer because that's what the devil always wants to do. I don't think sin and suffering necessarily is the goal of the evil one in our life. The goal of the evil one is how we interpret our struggles in life. In our sufferings he wants to make us think that God has abandoned us, that he is not with us, that he does not care about us. And in our sins he wants us to think that we are worthless, that we ourselves are vanity, that we can never be better, that we can never be loved and that we can never grow. He disfigures our face with all of these images and tries to tell us who we are. Verses God is the one when we truly encounter Him. He's always the breath of life and love and hope and courage. When we truly experience Jesus Christ in our life, it should be something that emboldens us in our life, to fight against our sins, to see His grace working through all sufferings and all struggles that He is the one who believes in us more than anybody else. I mean, think about it. They have that experiment and each of those individuals, they brought people off the streets and maybe weren't looking that good and they give them a complete makeover and let them look in themselves in the mirror on their best day and then sent them into interviews and interactions with other people. What would have been their experience? Probably would have had their chest up, pretty confident. That's what God does for us in our prayer. He wants to refashion our image and help us to see the beauty of who we actually are in Him. I think that's the Psalm. If you today you hear the voice of the Lord, hearted not your hearts. We had that first reading from Vanity of Vanities, from Ecclesiastes, about a man who's at the end of his life and he just sees no value, anything. But then we have in the parable from the gospel, this man who's in the midst of that journey that Solomon himself had gone on. This journey where he's not thinking about heaven. He's not thinking about his brothers. He's not thinking about how he can be brothers. He's just thinking about storing up his wealth here and now. And you have to ask the question, what happened in his life that made him think that it was all on him? What happened in his life where poverty itself became something to be afraid of? What does it mean to be rich in what matters to God? It means that you can be rich in relationship, rich independence, rich in surrender, that whether I have money or I don't, whether I have health or I don't, whether I'm in a time of peace or in a time of struggle, it does not matter because the Lord Himself is with me. We're all praying a special way right now for the Evans family, Russell Evans and Carter. They had a very tragic event happen this past week with their son Miles having a deep fall. He's been in the ICU fighting for his life this whole week. He's just been so beautiful to see so many people here pray for his salvation right now. And thanks to God, it sounds like he's getting better and that he will survive. We prayed, but I've been going and bringing him communion at night and just praying with him these past few days. And what has impressed me most is the parents mindset. If you can imagine and the pain you'd be going through watching your own child on life's support hanging by a thread, what would be going on in your mind about who God is and what your life is. And they're sitting in that every day and yet what they said to me, now the night I hope I don't think they'll mind me sharing it. Russell said something very beautiful. He said, part of me wonders if this was going to happen. This was a part of the life that we were going to live and that our child would be in this moment, in this hospital, no matter what. And God, in order to strengthen us and prepare us to encounter this moment, brought us into the church, taught us about who Jesus Christ is and the beauty of the sacraments. And most of all, gave us this incredible Catholic community, because he says, I never realized how rich I was in my Catholic brothers and sisters and in the faith until I experienced this deepest poverty that we have ever gone through in our lives. That's what it means to be rich in what matters to God. When you can see through a pure heart, your deepest sufferings and struggles and even your sins, and in that you see the Lord working His providence and grace for your soul and for the souls of your family and for your good. There's this beautiful line from the movie Thin Red Line. It's a meditation on suffering and death. He goes, one man looks at a dying bird and thinks there's nothing but unanswered pain. The death's got the final word that it's laughing at it. Another man sees that same bird, but he feels the glory. He feels something smiling through it all. We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And when we come to celebrate the sacrifice of the mass every every Sunday when we come here, maybe that's a little bit about what Christ was pointing us to. In that at the end of his life, he didn't have money, he didn't have fame, he didn't have success, he died abandoned, rejected, stripped of everything even his own clothing and out his closest followers. And yet it was in the midst of that total poverty that he gave us the Holy Eucharist, the gift of himself in pure poverty. And he was able to do that because he was rich in what matters to God. He was rich in his total trust in the Father's providence over his life even at the place of death. And when we receive him into our hearts, we too can feel the glory smiling through all things, and we too can become rich in what matters to God.