When the priests left the holy place,
the cloud filled the temple of the LORD
so that the priests could no longer minister because of the cloud,
since the LORD’s glory had filled the temple of the LORD.
During the time of the Old Covenant it was not possible to have a direct and immediate vision of God. Even Moses was only granted a vision of his back. When Elijah met God in the famous encounter on the mountain he prepared himself by first wrapping his face in his mantle (see First Kings 19:11-3). This seems altogether reasonable if even the seraphim use their wings to veil their faces in the presence of the almighty (see Isaiah 6:1-3). We see the overwhelming intensity of God's presence in today's first reading, in which the priests could no longer minister once the glory of the Lord had filled the temple. This unapproachable nature of God continued to mark the ministry of the priesthood within the temple up through the time of Jesus. We read about this in the Letter to the Hebrews, which tells that the high priest goes into the Holy of Holies "but once a year, and not without taking blood" (see Hebrews 9:6).
They scurried about the surrounding country
and began to bring in the sick on mats
to wherever they heard he was.
We ought to be struck, then, by how easy it was to approach Jesus, the fact that he rejected none who came to him (see John 6:37). If Jesus was in fact God, as it is clear that all of the Gospel writers believed, how was it safe to come to him so freely? Should it not have been the case that no one could see the face of God and live (see Exodus 33:20)? Part of the reason this was possible was because his presence was still veiled, now by his sacred humanity. His divinity was truly present, but visible only to the eyes of faith. Thus the people who came to him were able, according to their capacity, to encounter God himself, and to see the face of God, without being undone by it. We might imagine that even the less filtered vision granted to Peter, James, and John at the transfiguration was still something less than the fullness of the reality.
Amazingly, it does seem that the full vision of the face of God is intended by him to be our destiny. The fact that the letter to the Hebrews encourages us to seek holiness without which no one will see God seems to assume that this is meant to be so (see Hebrews 12:14). The first letter of Saint John tells us, "we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (see First John 3:2). Paul tells the Corinthians that we now "see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face" (see First Corinthians 13:12).
What we see now through faith is real, if partial. It is by means of faith that we are brought from being unable to approach God at all to the holiness that allows us to more and more behold him directly. Again, listen to Paul to the Corinthians, "we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (see Second Corinthians 3:18). The vision of faith transforms us by means of what we behold. It increases our capacity to guide our lives by hope and to live in love. The tradition of the Church calls the destiny of the blessed the beatific vision. Those who see this vision are so overwhelmed by it that they are more or less unable to sin, since in the light of such a vision sin is so obviously empty. And those who see it experience in that vision the fulfillment of every hope and desire.
Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered,
they laid the sick in the marketplaces
and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak;
and as many as touched it were healed.
A take away for us is that the process of growth is often both humble and hidden. Those around Jesus experienced transformation by merely touching his clothing. This calls us in turn to not take for granted on our opportunities for contact with Jesus, in his presence in others, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist. If the crowds were healed when they so much as touched the tassel, how much more might we be healed if we encountered Jesus in the Eucharist with true and living faith?
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