Turn back your hearts and fall asleep in friendship

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Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor.

By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor
A reflection on the daily readings, for Saturday of the Second Week of Advent, by Father Perry.
There are, in literature, many descriptions of two lovers, let us say, sitting in a garden or in a secluded space, and they are just gazing upon one another.
To gaze on another person is, I think, to look lovingly and longingly and with the utmost respect and yet desire.
It is to let one’s eyes rest upon the other lovingly.
That is what Sirach describes in his words today ending with this thought: “Blessed is he who shall have seen you [gazed upon you?] and who falls asleep in your friendship.”
What a beautiful way to say it. One is so secure and content who has gazed lovingly on the other in friendship — in peace — so much so that they could fall asleep in friendship.
Silhouettes of a young couple under the starry sky.

Silhouettes of a young couple under the starry sky.

Whoa!
But first, says Sirach, Elijah the prophet must come and cleanse and purify in even a fiery way.
Hearts have to be turned back so that fathers and sons may gaze upon one another lovingly and respectfully — all things restored.
This restoration would reconcile all and create the space for a lot of spiritual gazing to happen with all the resultant peace and joy and love and life that would flow forth for all.
We hear those famous words of Advent: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths: All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Elijah first. Then John. Then Jesus himself. And instead of “shutting up the heavens” and “sending down fiery chariots and fiery horses” and the “wrath of God” comes to cleanse and straighten out and heal and fix and make things, and all ready for that spiritual and necessary gazing to occur — that would be accomplished first by something awful and so hard to imagine or understand; and yet seemingly the only way for things to be truly fixed, truly made new.
This awful thing would be redeeming and divinely humanize us all: “So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.”
The cross!
From that place of hanging and healing, the sacred gaze would be restored! Jesus would have to gaze lovingly upon all — even those who would hatefully put him to death.
They would, strangely enough, need to be lovingly forgiven, divinely humanized, not hated for all of the hateful things that they were doing to this Son of Man.
That is what would save — love conquering hate!
It would take this — the cross — for us to be able to echo the refrain of the psalm today: “Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.”
+ And that wounded face and punctured head with a crown of thorns would gaze upon all with love, with forgiveness, with freedom, sinlessly, and with eyes so blessed and holy that we, too, could fall asleep now in his friendship.
And life, as we know it, would never be the same!
Father Perry D. Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com. Follow Father Perry on Twitter: @MrDeano76.

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