May we see as God sees
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) 2025
Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral, Hobart. It is a joy to gather as God’s family, parishioners and visitors alike, in this place of prayer and worship. Yesterday the Church celebrated the feast of St Vincent de Paul, that great apostle of charity who poured out his life for the poor. His spirit hovers close to our readings today, which confront us with a searching question: how do we see, and what do we choose to see?
The Gospel from St Luke (Luke 16:19–31, NJB) presents us with the vivid contrast between the rich man, clothed in fine linen, feasting magnificently every day, and Lazarus, lying at his gate, covered in sores, longing to eat scraps from the rich man’s table. The parable is not simply a moral tale about wealth; it is a piercing examination of vision. The rich man did not see Lazarus. Day after day, he stepped over him, blind to his suffering. His blindness was not of the eyes but of the heart.
Amos in our first reading (Amos 6:1, 4–7, NJB) thunders against those who live in ease, sprawled on ivory beds, drinking wine from bowls, while the ruin of Joseph goes unnoticed. Their sin is complacency, not cruelty. They have dulled their sight, numbed their consciences, closed their ears to the cries of the poor.
And Paul, writing to Timothy (1 Tim 6:11–16, NJB), urges him — and us — to “aim to be holy, to be devoted to God, to be full of faith and love, to be patient and gentle.” These virtues are the corrective lenses that sharpen our Christian vision. Without them, like the rich man, we risk spiritual blindness. With them, like St Vincent de Paul, we begin to see Christ in the poor, the sick, the forgotten.
Our society, too, trains us to look in certain directions. Just yesterday, all eyes were on the AFL Grand Final — a festival of spectacle, passion, and pride. Tickets for the Grand Final, or for the finals of the Australian Open, cost hundreds of dollars; they are spectacles with price tags that exclude many. Yet the Gospel places before us a far greater “final”: the judgment of our lives, when God will ask not what games we watched or what seats we occupied, but whom we noticed and whom we ignored.
The feasts of sport have their place, but the feast to which Christ invites us is of another order — the banquet where the poor are seated with honour, where the hungry are fed, where every Lazarus is welcomed as brother and sister. Here at this Eucharist, we anticipate that feast. We do not need corporate tickets to enter; the only entry requirement is a heart that longs for God.
Yesterday’s feast of St Vincent de Paul reminds us that true greatness is not measured in grand stands or corporate boxes, but in humble service. Vincent once said, “The poor are our masters.” He trained his followers not only to give to the poor but to honour them, to look them in the eye, to see in them the face of Christ. That is the vision our readings demand of us today.
So, let us examine our own sight. Who lies at the gates of our homes, our city, our Cathedral community? Who do we fail to see because we are too busy, too comfortable, too distracted? The Gospel is not condemning wealth but blindness — the failure to see Lazarus as a brother.
As we celebrate this Eucharist, may the Lord heal our vision. May we see as God sees — not with eyes clouded by pride, fear, or indifference, but with the clear gaze of love. And strengthened by this sacrament, may we leave here resolved to notice, to act, to serve — so that no Lazarus in our midst is left unseen.