We have seen, over the past few weeks, that St. Matthew’s Gospel is gradually revealing (or unveiling) who Jesus is: the Son of God. His disciples, for the first half of the Gospel, have had a supremely difficult time “seeing” Him clearly, for who He is. It is only at the halfway point of St. Matthew’s Gospel that the disciples begin to identify Him, as we saw in the storm on the Sea of Galilee and as we see this weekend in response to His question, “Who do you say that I am?”
In his book, Pray from Where You Are, James Carroll recalls something many of us remember from our childhood. Every Sunday, the comic page of many newspapers used to carry a series of printed games. One of everybody’s favorites was a picture showing some scene, like a family enjoying a picnic in a park. Printed beneath the picture were the words, “Can you find the man hidden in the picture?” James Carroll relates that, “You’d look and look, and at first wouldn’t see anything that looked like a man. Then you’d turn the paper this way and that to get a different view of it. Suddenly, from the edge of a fluffy white cloud you’d see an ear. Then, from the green leaves of a tree you’d see a mouth, and so on, until you’d see an entire man’s face smiling out at you from the picnic scene. Once you saw the man, that picnic scene was never the same again. For you had found the hidden man. You yourself had seen the smiling face.”
It’s the same way in our own lives. We know by faith that there is “a man” hidden away in every scene of daily life. And He is Jesus. Once we find Him, up close and personal, no scene in our lives is ever the same. “Open the eyes of our hearts, Lord.”
For more: https://youtu.be/idQ1n3cdgfo
