The Lord be with you! On Sunday evening over a hundred million people will gather to watch Super Bowl LIX. Whether Philadelphia has what it takes to beat Kansas City is not germane to us here. What we focus our attention on and what we allow ourselves to see is. Keeping custody of our eyes will help us to keep our hearts and minds clean.
“Custody of the eyes” is the old phrase about controlling what we look at. Currently, our culture has become quite accustomed to showing any and everything. “Viewer discretion advised” is now almost an advertisement for some rather than a warning. The desire to see and to know irrespective of how that will help or harm us, however, is not a virtue: it is a vice.
This gluttony of the eye leads many people into the sins of greed, lust, and rash judgement. The former two sins get mentioned quite often, but the sin of rash judgement is rarely noted for how grievous it is. Rash judgement, which is the desire for harm to befall someone in an unjustified manner, destroys our ability to love and seriously compromises our ability to be compassionate. If we see things that antagonize us or inflame our hatred, we become disposed to hate or - and this can be worse - to stop caring at all.
More than likely, Super Bowl LIX will have little or nothing objectionable in its broadcast. So we can watch it uncritically, right? No. Passively watching television or any video is bad because it inculcates a habit that disassociates the conscience from the senses. We should be noting whether it was a good play or a bad commercial. Shouting at the top of our lungs when the referee makes a poor call is also wrong, but it does require the viewer to be thinking.
When we watch anything we need to be using our minds so that we are training them to discern the good from the bad. We do not need to be experts in film theory to notice that something is beautiful and moving: we just need to be human. Controlling what we watch then is not just about the content but also about our approach.
The best part of watching the big game should be its communal character. Ideally, we engage it with family and friends and grow as a community and not as isolated individuals. The great benefit of mass media is the ability to bring people together in thought and sentiment who cannot be brought together in space.
If we can spend hours watching commercials, how much time can we spend looking at God? Do we have the discipline to put down our phones and look at the crucifix? When we get to Heaven, we will look God in His Holy Face. May our eyes long for the sight!
In His Sacred Heart,
Fr. John
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