2. Learn the various effects produced by God’s Word on different hearers.
Faber is singularly infelicitous in filling this basket. He observes that our Lord at one time drew near to the sea, but did not enter it; at another put off a little from land, but soon returned to it, and now in to-day’s Gospel crosses the sea, and having crossed it, performs the miracle: so does He shadow forth three kinds of Christians in His mystical Body, the Church: those who only approach the bitter sea of repentance, those who just enter it and again return to land, and those who traverse it and are found meet to sit down in green pastures at His heavenly banquet.
3. Learn the custody of the eyes.
Christ “lifted up His eyes” and beheld the multitude. He had them before on earth, not straying hither and thither; and so He teaches us to restrain our wandering gaze. His eyes meekly rested on earth; Eve’s, straying among the boughs, saw the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and those wandering eyes brought death into this world. So did the restless eyes of Potiphar’s wife light on Joseph, so did the unguarded eyes of David fall on Bathsheba, and the curious eyes of the two elders on Susanna. But we are not required to keep our eyes always fixed on earth, or closed; but to restrain them from idle curiosity, to avert them from dangerous
