Portraits of the spiritual Seeing in Mark's Gospel. Origen ... - Redalyc

Jesus and the Demons:...
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God goes beyond the conventionalities of culture and appearances,
that is why Jesus can recognize, by way of his scrutinizing sight, the
great potential of what they can be.
– The context of the seeing is the daily job activities of the chosen persons:
the fishermen were casting a net in the sea or mending them,
and the tax collector was sitting in his customs post. This additional
detail continues to demonstrate the divine initiative that reaches the
individual circumstances of the disciples.
– The calling from Jesus is direct and simple: «Follow Me and I will
make you become fishers of men» (1:17), «He called them» (1:20),
and He said to Levi «Follow Me!» (2:14). The calling comes after the
seeing as a consequence of Jesus’ visual perception.
– The reaction to Jesus’ calling is positive: leaving everything they were
doing, went after him. The action of following Jesus is illustrated with
a verb in aorist denoting a punctual, complete, and unconditional action:
followed Him (ēkoloúthēsan autō 1:18), went away (apēlthon) to
follow Him (1:20), followed Him (ēkoloúthesēn autō 2:14).
The brief narrative analysis of the three passages indicates that Jesus’
seeing is the first step in the process of vocation. The divine seeing is
meta-physical, namely spiritual since Jesus can perceive the totality of
the person, breaking through the barriers of the superficiality imposed
by the circumstances and culture. Therefore, it is not a casual look to
somebody, or just a simple glance of people doing their jobs. Jesus’
seeing is personal, attentive, penetrating, and selective.
The account of Mark 10:17-22 presents a context of calling (vocatio)
with a negative outcome that displays a sharp contrast with the result of the
calling of the first five disciples. The pericope talks about a rich man, who
is very pious and faithful to the Mosaic Law. One of the most remarkable
and distinctive feature of this narration can be found in the way in which
Jesus looked at the man in Mark 10:21-22. The markan author utilizes
the active participle aorist of the verb emblépō (emblépsas), which means
to look at something or somebody deeply. It is to see everything plainly
or to have a clear view of everything; also it means figuratively to look
at somebody with penetrating eyes in a spiritual sense 34 . The participle
34
Cf. W. Bauer, W.F. Arndt, F.W. Gingrich and F.W. Danker, Greek-English
Lexicon… , 254.