When I was a kid, whenever we’d go to my grandparents’ house, the first thing I would do is I’d go right to their living room and on their wall, they had this framed image of Jesus and his eyes were closed. 

But there’s an inscription on this image, it was kind of like a painting, that said, “if you look long enough, the eyes will miraculously open.” 

So it was one of those kind of like illusion things. And I remember the eyes never opened for me. They opened for my siblings and for my cousins and everyone else, but not for me. And I would stare and I would stare and I would say magic words, I’d stand on one leg, whatever I tried to do to get these eyes open, they wouldn’t open. 

And then finally I realized, it dawned on me one day, and that was like three days ago. No, I’m just kidding. But when I was probably in college, I went back and I looked, and I think you can find this image online probably, but the eyes are actually.  

Again, it’s like an illusion type trick. The eyes are actually open kind of like above the eyebrow eyelash. So they’re always open, basically. It’s just you’re kind of looking in the wrong place. So it was a good lesson for me. It’s like I didn’t have to work so hard to try to get Christ to look at me. He always was. He was always watching me and always loving me. And it’s the same for all of you. 

I mean, how often do we try to force something good from God to happen in our lives? How much do we think, like we have to earn God’s favor or his approval, whatever it might be. And we do tricks. We stand on one leg. 

We try to be super holy. And then we get real down on ourselves when things don’t go well, thinking, oh, great, now God’s going to punish us. 

But it’s never the case. God is always looking at us. There’s nothing we need to do to get his love. That’s what unconditional love is. So if we know that in mind, now this is going to seem like very naive or simple, but you know what? Let’s try it. If we know that truth, that God is always looking at us. He loves us unconditionally. We don’t have to work or earn his love. 

That gives us a deep peace. And that deep peace, hopefully, can allay a lot of our fears and a lot of the things that stem from our fear, like anger and war and violence and envy and all the things that we hear in our readings, 

Especially like our second reading from St. James. 

Think about that. 

All the anger and the fighting and the bitterness in the world comes from this interior doubt, like I need to prove myself or this person just slighted me and therefore I’ve got to make myself known. Versus if we trust in God and know that all the matters is basically how God sees us and God is ultimately in control, we won’t be afraid and we won’t be inclined to give in to that anger or that bitterness or that rivalry or jealousy. 

So I think Jesus is walking down. The apostles are kind of apart from him as they’re walking down to Jerusalem so they don’t see him. And so they think, “oh, maybe we can get away with this. Let’s just debate amongst ourselves who’s the greatest,” Because they don’t doubt that God is actually looking at them. 

It’s like when all the Mercy Home priests get together for dinner, me and Father Scott and Gather Carl and Father Greg and the Cardinal and we all debate amongst ourselves who’s the greatest Mercy Home celebrant. And we forget that Jesus is. 

Actually what we don’t debate that, obviously, because we all know it’s the cardinal and then Father Scott, right, second. 

So anyways, if you find yourself getting angry or fighting or envious, go to prayer and look at Jesus looking upon you. It will give you peace. Amen.