We who have ears ought to hear! We who have eyes ought to see!
One of the many running and walking routes for Creighton students here in Omaha and for yours truly is run down through campus to the Gene Leahy Mall and the adjacent Heart of America Park along the river downtown. During the week (when the weather is good enough) I do this walk and watch the many students jogging blissfully away, ear-buds in and jamming out to tunes as they catch their stride. I am not a runner but a walker and when the sun is bright I put on my shades to filter out the light and then put my own ear-buds in, in order to filter out the sounds of the street as I listen to my pre-selected music.
No longer do I have to look people in the eyes with my shades, or hear the voices of the homeless panhandlers asking for cash, the sound of construction and traffic, and any other noisy distraction that keeps me from my peaceful walk. There is a problem though with this for the sunglasses and ear-buds act as a type of filter then. They filter out the light and the noise and create a space, a window that can separate me, from the world around me, from the truth of who I am in relation to the truth of who you are, the truth of things in the outside world, and the truth of the lives of others either intentionally or unintentionally.
We all can be good filterers filtering out the light and the sounds of the real world, of what is actually happening around us and create a different world, a world of our own making. We filter life, instead of getting to the heart of the matter, of living the life of right relationship that God calls us to, that of being loving, caring, forgiving, compassionate people. We instead live with filters that block out the light of Christ, and filter out the sound of God’s Word, which calls for a more just, loving, and merciful world.
Our lives are filled with all kinds of filters. Some people call these filters, biases, some people call them ‘isms’. All these isms, these filters of racism, genderism, materialism, classism, fundamentalism, legalism, and all the other ‘isms’ that carry with it the filtering power of creating this vast chasm between us, of a culture of ‘us versus them’, instead of the truth that it really is just ‘us’, all of us, and all of us and God.
If we hold onto this notion of these negative biases, these discriminating, separating filters, these ‘isms’, then we can understand what Zebulum and Naphtali and the region around the Galilee were like at the time of Isaiah and at the time of Jesus. People didn’t really matter there, only money mattered. Making money from your profession mattered, not the relationship with the person you were working with to help you make it. Sound familiar?
Those towns were towns that treated people like an ‘ism’, like things and not like the sacred, holy gifts of God created humanness that God created for us to cherish. I don’t know about you, but that is scary for me. Their negative biases then is why they are likened to living in darkness. We all have our filters. If we continue in our lives to filter out the light of Christ, and keep using the filters that keep us from hearing the true message of the Word of God, then we, like them, lose the ability to know what real light, total light reveals: the Good News of God’s undying love and of Christ calling us to discipleship.
Even though we may think we don’t or refuse to recognize them we all have our filters, our biases, our ‘isms’. ‘Isms’ are dangerous because they filter certain things out that lead us to make certain people somebodies and others nobodies, certain factions within Christianity holier than others, and that is exactly what Paul’s warning to those darn Corinthians is all about.
The evangelist Matthew, thank God, is a filter remover. In our gospel for the day, Matthew takes the lowly of the Galilean society, the gruff fishermen, and places Christ, in all his glorious light and sound before them. Jesus calls them and asks them to follow. And they left everything, their profession, their boats, and their fathers to follow.
That is good news for us. Why, because Christ did not choose the “somebodies” of the Galilean society with which to build his community. Christ chose the “nobodies, the undesirables” with which to do it. Jesus showed us that God has no filters, other than the question “Have you loved?” with which to judge humanity. Like the apostles of old, we too are called today.
As Christ’s followers then may we find the inner-strength to revision our life, and all our relationships, with self, with our God, and with others as God and us together, called by love to love. For it’s freedom from those alienating filters that Jesus seeks so he can open each one of us in love for love so that this awesome and exciting life and reign of divine light alive will shine on and shine on all the more.
Rev. Kent Beausoleil, SJ
Rev. Beausoleil, SJ, PhD, has lived in the Creighton Jesuit Community since 2020. Currently he ministers as the Market Vice President for Mission Integration (NE/IA) for CommonSpirit/CHI Health while continuing his ministry as a mission leader at five local area hospitals: Immanuel Medical Center, and Lasting Hope in Omaha, and Mercy Corning, Mercy Council Bluffs, and Missouri Valley in Iowa. Joining the Jesuits in 1997 and ordained in 2007 his Jesuit formation focused on three types of ministries: healthcare, spiritual direction and pastoral counseling, and higher education focusing on young adult spiritual development.
Rev. Kent A. Beausoleil, SJ has a PhD in Student Affairs from Miami University in Oxford, OH. He also possesses master’s degrees in public administration, philosophy, divinity and education. He loves to walk and be out in nature, cross-stitch and bake.
The ability to reflect on other contributors’ reflections as well as being able to provide a personal monthly spiritual reflection has become an important and integral part of my daily prayer.
