The Spotless Mirror of the Power of God

November 15, 2007

Thursday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time

For Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion, and she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity. For she is an aura of the might of God and a pure effusion of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nought that is sullied enters into her. For she is the refulgence of eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness. Wisdom 7:24-26

Then he said to his disciples, “The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. There will be those who will say to you, ‘Look, there he is,’ (or) ‘Look, here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit. For just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be (in his day). But first he must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation. Luke 17:22-25

Piety

O God, Creator of all that is perfect in this world, watch over your imperfect servants. Do not allow us to become hopelessly tarnished. Polish our imperfections with your forgiveness. Remove our dents with your salvation. Help us to be your eyes and to perfectly see the needs of others in this world. Do not allow us to walk away and forget the wisdom that those sights reveal. Instead, make each encounter an epiphany with the image of your goodness that propels us to the action that the sight of you requires of us. Amen.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/111507.shtml

Mirrors allow us to see something that is already there. Mirrors allow us to see ourselves standing face to face with…ourselves. They don’t reveal anything new. But they do give us a new perspective on a very familiar sight.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Mirrors have a long history of use both as household objects and as objects of decoration. The earliest mirrors were hand mirrors; those large enough to reflect the whole body did not appear until the 1st century AD.” The mirrors in use in ancient civilizations were highly polished metal objects, not the coated glass mirrors we use today. So the image seen had many more imperfections than the mirror in your bedroom or bathroom.

What do the Pharisees see? The teachers grilling Jesus today are seeing imperfectly. When they ask Jesus about the time of the coming of God’s kingdom, Jesus replies that the kingdom is among you. In fact, the key to the Kingdom is standing in front of them answering their questions. The NAB teaches us that the emphasis in this reply has been shifted from a future happening to “something that is already present in Jesus’ preaching and healing ministry.” Luke has also appended further traditional sayings of Jesus about the unpredictable suddenness of the day of the Son of Man, and assures his readers that in spite of the delay before that day comes, it will bring judgment unexpectedly on those who do not continue to be vigilant.

If we study the use of the image of mirrors throughout scriptures, we might learn some important insights into the meaning of this encounter, Biblical theology and our own way of seeing and encountering God. Perhaps the first passage that many of us could recall with such an image of a mirror used as an analogy is from 1 Corinthians 13.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:11-13 (Emphasis added.)

Light does three things when it hits an object. It is absorbed, reflected, or transmitted through it. In order for a smooth surface to act as a mirror, it must reflect as much of the light as possible and must transmit and absorb as little as possible. In order to reflect light rays without scattering or diffusing them, a mirror’s surface must be perfectly smooth or its irregularities must be smaller than the wavelength of the light being reflected. Therefore, what you see in a mirror, especially back in the first century, was not a perfect reflection of reality. What St. Paul sees in a mirror is imperfect. Seeing face to face shows us directly the perfection of God’s creation.

The Word of God is also the Light of the World. What happens when it hits us? Is it transmitted, absorbed or reflected? Does the message pass right though us like light through a pane of glass? Maybe it leaves behind something but has very little impact? Or do we absorb it when we hear it but fail to do anything about the lessons learned? Or, is it reflected in the way we live our life? Does it change us from being a blank slate to being a messenger of the image of God?

Hebrew Scriptures reveal that wisdom does not suffer from these same imperfections that may hinder our reflection of the Light of the World. For she is the refulgence of eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness.

The perfection of God’s work compared with humanity also comes through in the Book of Job. The wondrous works of God are creations which Job knows that humanity can not match.

Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God. Do you know how God lays his command upon them, and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine? Do you know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him who is perfect in knowledge, you whose garments are hot when the earth is still because of the south wind? Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a molten mirror? Teach us what we shall say to him; we cannot draw up our case because of darkness. Shall it be told him that I would speak? Did a man ever wish that he would be swallowed up? Job 37:14-20 (Emphasis added.)

Mirrors not only help to differentiate our limitations compared with God’s limitless perfection, but also they help us to understand the interrelationships between people. Ben Sirach, like Jesus, extols us to be ever vigilant.

Never trust your enemy, for like the rusting of copper, so is his wickedness. Even if he humbles himself and goes about cringing, watch yourself, and be on your guard against him; and you will be to him like one who has polished a mirror, and you will know that it was not hopelessly tarnished. Do not put him next to you, lest he overthrow you and take your place; do not have him sit at your right, lest he try to take your seat of honor, and at last you will realize the truth of my words, and be stung by what I have said. Sirach 12:10-12 (Emphasis added.)

“Not hopelessly tarnished.” There is a lesson to be learned in the polishing a mirror. You become aware of every flaw, every dent, and every ding. The act of polishing is an important act of vigilance, observation and action. By studying the imperfections, we can try to rub them out. By knowing the imperfections of others, we can avoid the ways that they might try to tempt us, to trap us. However, we also learn about recognizing our own imperfections.

Knowing our limitations allows us to set our sights on what is required of us. Finally, the mirror holds for the Cursillista a lesson about action. After the letter of James teaches us about the value of trials and temptation, the ancient author also tells us that we can not just hear the word, out lives must reflect the word in our everyday actions.

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. James 1: 22-25 (Emphasis added.)

Action

We can not just walk away from the mirror God holds up for us in this world and pretend that the encounter did not happen.

Just look at the news tonight or the newspaper. Sitting there on the front page of today’s New York Times is photo by Vanessa Vick of Afonso García, 6, who was exiled from his relatives’ household after being accused of being a witch. In the story by Sharon LaFraniere, we learn:

The authorities in one northern Angolan town identified 432 street children who had been abandoned or abused as suspected witches. A report last year by the government’s National Institute for the Child and the United Nations Children’s Fund described the number of children deemed to be witches as “massive.”

The notion of child witches is not new here [in Angola]. It is a common belief in Angola’s dominant Bantu culture that witches can communicate with the world of the dead and usurp or “eat” the life force of others, bringing their victims misfortune, illness and death. Adult witches are said to bewitch children by giving them food, then forcing them to reciprocate by sacrificing a family member.

But officials attribute the surge in persecutions of children to war — 27 years in Angola, ending in 2002, and near constant strife in Congo. The conflicts orphaned many children, while leaving other families intact but too destitute to feed themselves.

It turns out that the local Catholic Church is operating the only sanctuary for children accused and abused and abandoned by these allegations.

Consider supporting the local churches through Catholic Relief Services (www.crs.org) or broader efforts undertaken by UNICEF and other international relief and development organizations for their work to save the children from being hopelessly tarnished by these false accusations and the other man-made scars of war, famine, poverty and disease.