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Lift Up Your Eyes And Look

Keraza Magazine issue 9-10 March 11, 2016

"Lift up your eyes and look" (John 4:35). This was Christ's request from the disciples as a commandment requiring obedience. Looking does not simply mean seeing, but opening up to a truth and gaining it. Lifting up the eyes means two levels of enlightenment, one inferior to the other and is cloudy in comparison. If we were in the place of the disciples, we would have felt perplexed as Christ informs them that the fields are white for harvest, while their eyes and minds inform them that the harvest will not come for another four months. Actually, this is God's intention and Economy in all creation, "For over all the glory there will be a covering" (Isaiah 4:5). The covering is not the truth, but is the fallaciousness behind which hides the truth. Therefore, there are those whose insight stops at the covering, assuming it the truth, while there are those who deepen their requests to obtain the Truth Himself. Some reach truth through the experience of senses and mind, but that experience disappoints them and they find themselves before vanity itself, while others feel with their trained spiritual senses the revelations of the Holy Spirit in their inner person. The first build on the sand, while the second build on the rock; the first build hay and wood that burn, while the other build gold and silver which survive. All that perishes and fades away has nothing to do with the Truth.

Nature teaches us this; you look at a rose and resolve that it is red, and all agree to this truth, yet the truth of the matter is that it absorbed all the colors except red, which it reflected, and so it appears to be red. Red is the only color absent from the being and actuality of this rose. Likewise, all might agree to the serenity of a place, while in reality there is a great commotion of sound waves in this place that are above human audible level. Therefore, no person can claim to know and own the truth. Perhaps this is what kept the Lord Christ from answering Pilate's question of "What is truth".

Every ascetic labor can be lived on two levels: the level of vanity and the level or of Truth. Prayer can be a vain repetition of words (Matthew 6:7), communion can be as one who eats and drinks judgment to himself (1 Corinthians 11:29), and fasting as a vain offering (1 Isaiah 1:13). Perhaps this is the reason that many will be greatly puzzle in the Last Day, asking, "'Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?' Then He will answer them, saying, `Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'" (Matthew 25:44-45). He is clarifying how those were judged because they did not discern the Truth in what they saw; those least were the covering behind which He hid. Likewise, Christ's question: "If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" (Luke 16:11) clarifies to us that the vain covering has a job to test the faithfulness of our struggle to run. As man was subjected to futility by living in a fake perishing world, he then groans and labors with birth pangs while giving what is Caesar's, until he is freed from the level of slavery of corruption, and is entrusted the level of truth and glory of the children of God.

Bishop Youssef
Bishop, Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States