Turning One's Gaze toward God

Solemnity of All Saints

One of my favourite songs is often described as the epitome of British dark humour. Some of you may know it: “Always look on the bright side of life.” Seems like a good and encouraging piece of advice until you realised that it was sung by a person or persons dying by crucifixion (not Jesus but the movie’s eponymous protagonist, Brian, Jesus’ neighbour) and it comes in the closing scene of the Monty Python movie, with other crucifixion victims joining in the chorus as the credits roll. To declare that one should always look on the bright side of life even as one suffers the excruciatingly slow and painful execution of crucifixion is the height of irony. Is this what our Lord is suggesting in His teaching on the beatitudes? Should we be “happy” or pretend to be “happy” even when everything is going south? Is this the reason why we Christians declare that the Friday where our Lord was betrayed, tortured, humiliated and died, a “Good” Friday instead of a “bad” one?

Perhaps, there is always at least two ways of looking at a bad situation. An old ditty best sums this up: “Two men looked out from prison bars, one saw the mud, the other saw stars." This little ditty highlights that individuals in the same situation can have vastly different perspectives; one sees only the negative, while the other finds hope or the positive, demonstrating how perspective shapes one's experience and can lead to different choices.

Likewise, there are also two different ways of viewing the scenarios described by the Beatitudes. One may see them as misfortunes and even curses from God - poverty, weakness, hunger, grief, loss, persecution - who wouldn’t? But then our Lord invites us to view them as blessings and in fact a source of Christian joy. Which view seems more realistic? If we didn’t know Jesus any better, we would have chosen the former. When faced with difficulties, trials and tribulations, our first reaction would be a negative one, rather than a positive one - we would see mud, rather than stars. But the Beatitudes seek to challenge this world view.

So, how do we make the shift from seeing only mud to seeing stars, even in the most difficult and painful situations of life? The recently canonised Saint Carlo Acutis gives us the answer: “Sadness is turning one’s gaze inward; happiness is turning one’s gaze toward God. Conversion is nothing other than shifting one’s gaze from below to above. A simple movement of the eyes is enough.” The wise words of this young man shows us that the joy described by our Lord in the Beatitudes are not naive or false optimism; instead, they represent a deeper, authentic joy found not in worldly success but in humility, mercy, and aligning one's life with God's will. The Beatitudes overturn worldly standards of happiness, which often equate it with wealth, power, and success. True joy comes from recognising one's spiritual need and emptying the self to make room for God, rather than filling oneself with material possessions or self-sufficiency.

Our modern society is suffering from a pandemic of narcissism, of self-absorption, where we believe that everything revolves around us as the centre of the universe. So, every difficulty or challenge, every hurdle or obstacle we encounter in life, becomes another opportunity to moan our misfortune and decry our victimhood. The situations in the Beatitudes will definitely look like “mud”, like curses, if we are merely focusing on ourselves. Saint Acutis was correct to diagnose the cause of “sadness,” it’s “turning one’s gaze inward.”

Our Lord provides the antidote to this pandemic of narcissism through His Beatitudes. A saint is one who turns his gaze to God or as Carlo Acutis puts it, the secret to happiness is “shifting one’s gaze from below to above.” The saint is not an individual who is insulated from what the world sees as unhappy situations but is one who can shift his or her gaze from his present turmoil and sufferings to the joy of eternal life which God has promised to those who remain faithful and on course in following His Son.

In the first reading, we are given a vision of the host of saints arrayed in heaven. They are not those spared of persecution but rather those who have gone through it. In the gospel, our Lord is speaking to people who for the most part live in poverty, for whom hunger, starvation and death are daily realities. He looks at them and tells them that if they follow the way of the kingdom, they will be blessed. They will be assured of true happiness. If we love God and the things of God as we ought, even in this life, we will consider the suffering we experience in this life as insignificant in comparison to the joys for which we hope. And unless we learn to love God above all things, and all things for God’s sake, we shall never find true happiness. This is the message of the Beatitudes.

So, our Lord invites us who are called to be saints to always reach for the stars instead of grovelling in the mud of despair. To always look on the brighter side of life is not to ignore the issues and difficulties we have to face or attempt to pull the wool over our eyes and pretend these problems do not exist. But we need to remember that concentrating on the problem can make it appear larger and more consuming. Focusing on problems can lead to depression, despair and exhaustion. If problems are the sole focus, God can diminish in your vision, leading to a forgetfulness of His promises and power. Instead, we are called like all the saints to always shift our gaze from below to above, to focus on the Lord even if we are in the midst of pain and distress because as the Psalmist assures us, we “shall receive blessings from the Lord and reward from the God who saves him. Such are the men who seek him, seek the face of the God of Jacob.”

At the end of his homily on the occasion of the canonisation of two amazing men, young saints of our time, Pope Leo XIV said that the lives of “Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to waste our lives, but to direct them upward and make them a masterpiece. They encourage us with their words: "Not I, but God," said Carlo. And Pier Giorgio: "If you have God at the centre of all your actions, then you will reach the end." This is the simple but sure formula of their holiness. And it is also the testimony we are called to imitate to enjoy life to the fullest and go to meet the Lord at the feast in heaven.”