Today’s Word: Gaze

We spend so much of our lives creating and maintaining the person that our friends, family and co-workers see. This is the “self” of our upbringing, education and career, as well as of the myriad of other roles we take on — parent, spouse, church member, little league coach, employee or boss or volunteer. This is the self that becomes what people say about us: Nice guy or jerk, selfish or generous, authentic or fake. This is, to a great extent, how we will be remembered when we’re gone. But who are we, really?

St. Ignatius suggests that we always begin prayer by becoming “aware of God aware of me.” Caught in this mutual gaze of adoration (for surely God adores us even more than we adore God), we begin to find our true selves. Aware of God’s gaze, we can have the confidence to be our true selves before God, taking off the masks that we often put on just to make it through our days in all of the different roles that we must play.

There is nothing wrong in playing roles. We have mortgages or rent to pay. We have family obligations to meet. We have passions to pursue. But all of these will fade with time and we will find ourselves alone before God, who cares little for our masks and greatly for our naked souls. So we must ask ourselves, to which of our selves do we give the most attention and time? Which of our selves do we feed most often?

If we’re not sure how to answer that question, we need to spend more time in God’s gaze. For only that time of solitude and prayer will remind us of our true selves, as writer and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes: “I am who I am in God’s eyes, nothing more and nothing less. This is the serenity and the freedom of the saints.”

Ask yourself in silence: How much time do I give to nurturing my true self that is held in God’s gaze? How much time do I give to nurturing my career and the rest of my life? Do I need to readjust my priorities in any way?