As Fr. Jose' was giving the lesson, I kept thinking about the gaze of Christ, and I kept seeing that gaze in my memory. It brought me all the way back to the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that my mother put on my bedroom wall when I was in adolescent turmoil. I used to stare at His face for what seemed hours, always amazed that He was looking squarely at me! A short time after my husband's death, frantically going through piles of papers to find bank account information, I found an 8X10 picture of Frank that I had taken before he was even sick. He was looking squarely at me. His look of love was permanent, untainted. I framed it and put it on the table near my bed. It sustains me.

I cannot contain it. But I am a sinner and my sinful nature makes me awkward and uncertain, even embarrassed to possess such a gift and afraid that it will be wrongly communicated or not received. I get thrown off balance. I look away from the object of my desire. "But yes, Lord, you know that I love you!" That is the crazy truth of it all! And I so desire for that love to become a pure and fixed gaze. I want to fall at the feet of everyone and say "I'm sorry for betraying the truth of my heart!"

This Advent, I think of Jesus in the manger. He needed a human gaze that was free from sin. It was His Mother's. And that gaze sustained Him from crib to cross. Christ is our origin and destiny. Our lives our lived in the grappling with that gaze!