“My heart says to You, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’ Hide not Your face from me.” (Psalm 27:8-9)
This was a passage that spoke to me out of the dryness I was experiencing at one spiritual exercises years ago. I had been struggling all weekend to connect with Christ, to no avail. Nothing seemed to be working, and as the end of the retreat drew nearer and nearer, I felt like I had wasted my time, not received any lights, and not succeeded in making the most of this silent retreat experience that only comes around for me once a year. On hearing this line from the psalms in the darkness of the chapel in the middle of the night, I closed my eyes and raised my face to God, allowing His gaze to simply fall on me. I left the retreat the next day with no resolutions, no answers to the questions I was discerning, nothing tangible to show for my weekend away, other than the utter transformation of having experienced the gaze of Christ, of having allowed myself to be truly seen.
This must be what St. John Vianney was referring to when he told this story:
“When I first came to Ars, there was a man who never passed the church without going in. In the morning on his way to work, and in the evening on his way home, he left his spade and pickaxe in the porch, and he spent a long time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Oh, how I loved to see that! I asked him once what he said to Our Lord during the long visits he made to Him. Do you know what he told me? ‘Eh, Monsieur le Curé, I say nothing to Him; I look at Him and he looks at me!’”
Since that middle-of-the-night moment in the chapel when Christ invited me to gaze at Him, and to receive His loving gaze in return, I’ve tried to return to that simple yet powerful form of meditation described by the humble, holy man in St. John Vianney’s account: “I look at Him and he looks at me!” A way to do this in a concrete way is by praying the rosary through the gaze of Christ.
As I pray each decade, I contemplate Christ in each mystery, and imagine myself receiving His (or His dear mother’s) loving gaze. This is sweet and lovely when I get to look into the eyes of the newborn Christ-child swaddled in His mother’s arms, but not quite so fun when I have to gaze into His eyes as He is scourged, or as He dies. But it’s always a powerful way to experience the mysteries of the rosary, particularly when I am seeking connection with Christ, and longing to be seen.
