2 Corinthians 4:18 "[B]ecause we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

Paul is absolutely right, of course, everything in this world is passing away. Our eternal life will be with eternal things that we cannot, right now, see. Things we do see now are imperfect reflections of those perfect things. Plato said we are like prisoners in a cave, seeing shadows of things on the walls and trying to interpret them as reality. Before the Fall, we saw things perfectly, we were eternal and could see the eternal things, but once sin entered into the world, we became separated from that perfect vision, we entered Plato's cave and can only see shadows. In God's goodness to us, even the shadows are very pleasing, but the risk lies in us looking at them too much, interpreting them for ourselves, and making our interpretations ends in and of themselves, forgetting that they are pointing us to our perfect, eternal home.

As an example, a few weeks ago, the second reading at Sunday Mass included Paul's instructions to husbands and wives. Wives are told to be subordinate to their husbands, while husbands must love their wives. This rankles many, especially women, because as a society we have layered the shadow of marriage with our interpretation of what it should be, and made that what we look at, instead of what it points to. The institution of marriage is a model of our relationship with God. It is something that helps humanity on its road to the eternal, while also preserving the order in society that is essential.

Staying with the marriage example, in all things, there has to be a final say. God, of course, has the final say in everything. It is to Him that we all must be obedient. Even Jesus was obedient to the Father to the point of death. But Jesus established the Church and gave it authority, so we are to be obedient to the Church, and He established sacramental marriage as a reflection of God's love for His people, and of the order that helps create and sustain new life in the world. Submission to God and His order brings about God's plan. We know God is all good, yet it still is not easy to be obedient to Him at all times. It is much harder to be obedient to a fellow human being, who is definitely not all good all the time! But much of the difficulty in this arises from the fact that we are looking at marriage the wrong way. We see its shadow, we interpret what it should be through our human will, and we think we understand it. The only way to truly understand it is to stop looking at it, and look to the unseen, the eternal.

Lately it feels more and more as if we are living in the Matrix. Our society looks and feels real, but the mask of reality is slipping in many places. We can see that we are being told lies in so many circumstances, although we don't know what the full truth is. This can cause anxiety and depression, but it does not have to. Instead, we should do as Paul says and stop looking at the things that are seen. They are mere shadows that are being manipulated by our enemy to draw us away and to convince us that things, like marriage, are very different from what God intends them to be. When we realize that, we can fix our eyes on heaven and the eternal. Even though we cannot see the eternal, we know it is there because we have faith. Looking to it gives us the peace of knowing all of this is passing away, and the things that are eternal will not be subject to the manipulation and lies of the devil. The unseen things we should be focusing on are perfect, because God is perfect, and we will get to them eventually.