麻豆社

Good morning.

Today is 14th July, which for a French woman, immediately says, Bastille Day, bank holiday and fireworks. It takes me back to my school days: we always got told that on the day the Bastille prison was taken by the people of Paris, king Louis XVI wrote the word 'nothing' as his diary entry. Of course, historians tell us that his diary was only concerned with recording the royal hunt. But still. It tells us something of the king's field of vision, his priorities, what he saw, and what he didn't see, or chose not to see. It is so easy to get trapped in a bubble, an echo chamber of those who look at, and comment on, the things we see already, and be oblivious to invisible people and events around us. It takes effort to extend our field of vision, and willingness to be made uncomfortable. The best advice I was given on becoming a priest was, 'always pay particular attention to invisible people'. Go out of your way to see those who are marginalised, those who are quiet, those who are excluded, those who simply never make it to a place where they are seen. If you don't actively search, you will not see.

In the Gospels, Jesus is particularly good at doing this. In a beautiful story, a wealthy, well-known city official, Jairus, seeks healing for his young daughter. In the same narrative, a woman, excluded from society because of a chronic illness, reaches from behind to touch him, hoping not to be seen. Jesus heals both. But he heals the daughter of Jairus behind closed doors, making the visible invisible. In contrast, he heals the nameless woman in front of everyone, and enables her to be seen and received back into society.

It is of course much more comfortable not to see everything. People, systems and places that are invisible can make us uncomfortable. Whether it is a homeless person, an isolated elderly neighbour, someone with chronic illness, seeing them challenges us to ask, why are they often invisible to me? And what part do I play in keeping them invisible? It would have been agonising for Louis XVI to see his world falling apart, and the way in which his own privilege had sustained an unjust, oppressive system that sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Truly looking, and seeing, is a dangerous act. It calls us either to denial and complicity, or to action that will change both ourselves, and the world around us.

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