Demon Eyes or Divine Gaze? Part 1

‘I look upon you at every moment with all the delicacy of My divine friendship, with an inexhaustible mercy.’ In Sinu Jesu

A friend of mine described the eyes of his drunken abuser as black and beady, snake-like. Those eyes bore a hole in his 12-year-old soul as sure as the rape broke his physical integrity. ‘Only the eyes of Jesus looking at me in love are more powerful than his [my abuser’s] demon eyes.’ My friend places himself before the divine gaze of Merciful Jesus all the time. His clarity as a man depends on it.

Gratefully, most of us have not endured rape. But critical, leering, and shaming eyes over the course of our lives bore holes in our confidence as male and female. Instead of confirming us, rejecting eyes have accused us. Might we surmise that eyes shame us more loudly than words? One fierce glance can divide a sensitive soul by driving doubt into one’s emerging core.

The collective ‘face’ of disapproval becomes a reason to look down and away from others; sadly, the shamed predict rejection and begin to ‘read’ it into faces that have no such intention. Psychologists call this projection; one sees a scowl or disdainful look upon the blank glances of others. The shamed fulfill their own dismal prophesy.

One slouches through social settings and can experience almost excruciating anxiety over the prospect of bad things ahead. Demonized under the gaze of demon shame! The demon concurs: you are an outcast, an orphan, a passed over child. Shame accuses our humanity, in contrast to the confirmation of our pretty good offering. More than anything else, the demon seeks to bind us to the lie that we trouble and burden people rather than make them better.

Wary of people, one escapes to unrealities like porn. All pleasure, no shame. Except for the gnawing conviction that this sensational refuge is now a prison. And poisoning one’s vision of others altogether. Shame upon shame! The lust addict sizes up the most holy and measures others’ value based on where they align with porn’s naked gymnasts.

The shamed find no rest, no bridge to the love that could be ours. Lust seals loneliness. Isolated and accused by demon eyes, we become demonized and see others through a diabolical lens. Hell-on-earth.

Jesus brings heaven on earth. He encounters each of us as directly as He did the Samaritan woman. His tender face-to-face exchange with her broke shame’s death grip. She looked Holiness infused with Almighty Mercy right in the face and saw eyes that loved her. With one look, Jesus replaced all the lustful, squinting, and arrogant eyes she had come to expect. His gaze rooted and grounded her in love.

Place yourself before the Face of Mercy today.