Reflections | SEEING

Monsignor Don Fischer reflects on why you shouldn’t fear being honest and vulnerable to God.

I want to talk to you about seeing, seeing things for what they really are. And when I was first ordained in those first couple of years, there was a little boy in a parish that I was assigned to. And he was so cute. And he loves whenever he saw me, he would just light up and say, “Hey, Mr. Fisher, man, Mr. Fisher, man.”

And so anyway, he was just somebody that whenever he was around, I was aware of it. I could always see him coming, you know. And anyway, one Sunday he was at Mass and he was in the front row and he was staring at me and looking at me. And he was standing up and everybody was sitting down, but he was small enough. He was probably in kindergarten or first grade. And but anyway, he was looking at me and then he turned around and he looked at me upside down and everything was really distracting in a way, but it was cute. So the next time I saw him, he said to me, “Did you see me?” And I said, “Yeah, I saw you.”

He looked at me and he said, “Did you see me see you? Did you see me see you?” And I thought, That's an interesting image. Was I aware of what he was seeing? And it made me wonder about this whole notion, there's a thing about seeing God. It is like the most glorious thing in the world. But more important than seeing God to me is what do we think God feels about what we are, who we are?

How does He see us? And that's where mercy comes in. So incredibly important because one of the things that I think happens when somebody wants to see us as we are, we hide something. I mean, it's kind of natural. We just sort of say, well, yeah, I'm this and this, but I don't want to tell you, I don't want you to see something about me that isn't what it should be.

I want to hide something from you. And that means that we do that because we think that the thought of being somebody less than is going to limit or separate us from whatever we want from that person who's looking at us. We make it a thing that separates us. It is so sad because when we look at God, he is so, already He sees us.

I mean, that's amazing. I mean, it's clear that he doesn't have a problem knowing who we are and seeing everything about us. But how comfortable do we feel about letting God really see us and we see him seeing us and his reaction is everything. If it's judgment, if it pulls back, if it shakes his head, if it's disappointed, then something is really off.

Because there's something so beautiful about the full revelation of who God is in Jesus. And there's one clear thing: He is a doctor. He is a person that wants to heal and transform, and he can't heal and transform anything unless we fully accept it. And if somebody you love is not going to accept something that you are, you're going to hide it, you're going to push it down, you're going to repress it.

So think about that. When you're thinking about this image that sometimes religion presents to us about we have a God who loves us when we are at our best and not very happy with us when we're not. And that's so Old Testament and it's everywhere, but most especially it's in our personality. We want to hide things that aren’t attractive. All I want to say is let God see you. And He sees you as you are and know that what he's seeing, all he has in his heart is a longing to transform it and to love you and support you in that transformation process.

Have a great day.

Reflections Archives

Kyle Cross