Dispatches from Fr. Charitas
Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Christ approached a blind man and asked him, “What would have me to do for you?” The man answered, “I want to see!”

And I too have often answered that same question asked of by the Lord, “Lord, I want see. I want to see clearly. I want my eyes to be able see the truth of the matter. I want to not be deluded or deceived … I want to see with eyes Divine.”

In the latter part of my life … much of my day is devoted to ridding my eyes of the specks of dust so that I might see more clearly. Much of my time is devoted to seeing not what I want to see but to see what is actually happening. Every day, sometimes every hour, I beg for the Lord to heal my vision of the tints and distortions my culture places on my eyes. I want to see through the eyes of Christ.

I have learned through the decades of my ministry that a large share people think they see with clear vision, but actually they do not. They look at life through tinted lenses, tinted with cultural prejudices, greedy self-interest, patriotism, economics, commitment to worldly ideologies, delusions and denials. Sometimes they look through lenses that distort the vision without even being aware of the distortion. You might say it is a stigmatism of the soul, seeing life and circumstance, God and humanity, in an image that can never get focused. I know other people has this struggle, for I have this struggle and I am not much different from all others.

“Lord, wash my eyes, correct my astigmatism, remove the lenses through which I view life.”

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de al Cruz