Reflecting on the second reading (Hebrews 12:1-4), I talked about our mutual gaze at Jesus at the 4 p.m. Vigil Mass on Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025, and the 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Masses on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025, at the St. Francis Chapel in the Prudential Center in Boston.

The recording is from the 8 a.m. Mass.

Text of the homily

What are we gazing at in our lives?

Our world bombards us with images, videos, sounds and music to grab our attention and hold our gaze. This information flood can trick us into thinking that throughout our life, we are wandering, picking and choosing where we look.

However, the object of our gaze determines our direction. Why did our driving teachers teach us to focus on the road before us? Because if we look somewhere else, we might go off the road or we might not see the danger in front of us.

Thus, my question: What are we gazing at?

Today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews tells us to gaze at Jesus: “Persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”

However, we must remember that this gaze is mutual. Jesus gazes at us with love.

Because of original sin, our suffering and our modern philosophy, we can assume that God does not look at us and does not care about us. But the Bible refutes that. For example, when the rich young man asks Jesus about obtaining eternal life, the evangelist Mark records, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”

In an episode of The Chosen, Jesus raises Lazarus and afterward Thomas cries out and falls to the ground. Anguished and angry, he demands that Jesus look him in the eye. He replied that he is. Actually Jesus was looking at him since his scream. While Thomas wants answers why he raised Lazarus and did not save the woman he loved, Jesus asks that Thomas follow him despite not understanding at the moment.

Here is another thing to consider. The spiritual danger is to think of this gaze with Jesus as only something exterior. We look out toward God. Jesus looks at us from the outside. We can safely keep God an arm’s length from us. Why do we have the stereotype of Catholics of sitting in the back of the church?

Rather, this gaze has an interior aspect. Through Baptism, Jesus begins to reside in our souls. Through the Eucharist we receive today, His presence deepens in us. Through regular Confession, His presence is restored when we injured it through sin. Right now Jesus abides in us.

St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “You were more inward to me than my most inward part and higher than my highest.”

Jesus gazes at us from the inside out. He sees in us the good qualities, our hopes and dreams, but he also sees the places of sin, brokenness and hurt.

Yes, he has judged sin and killed it with his death and resurrection. Yet his loving gaze invites us, invites us to have guilt for our sins but even more to trust in his mercy to pardon us, in his power to heal us and in his grace to support our fight and journey toward holiness.

Thus, Jesus truly becomes our leader and perfecter of our faith.

We look outward to Jesus in people, images and the Eucharist so we can learn again to look at him in our heart, the center of our soul, during our prayer.

The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that in the Paschal Mystery of his Passion, Death and Resurrection, Jesus becomes our model: “Consider how he endured such opposition from sinners, in order that you may not grow weary and lose heart.”

After conversing with him, we share Him with everyone we meet in our actions and stories.

What should we gaze at? Jesus. Because he was lovingly gazing at us from inside us since the beginning.