Like many of you, this past week I followed closely the news of the search for the deep sea submersible Titan. I found myself checking every few hours for updates, holding on to hope that the passengers were somehow alive, and rescue crews would be able to invent some way to bring them safely to the surface. Sadly, in spite of a massive effort, this story has ended in tragedy. Crews have found the imploded remains of the submersible, where all five passengers died. We pray for those five souls, and their families.

Four days before the Titan made its tragic final descent, another ship was lost at sea, though you may have heard nothing about it. It was an overloaded fishing trawler sailing from Libya to Greece, carrying as over 750 men, women, and children, of which only 104 were saved. It is one of the worst maritime disasters in recent history.

Both of these stories are terrible, and both are deserving of our grief and compassion. But the overwhelming attention paid to the first, and the almost total lack of attention paid to the second, begs some hard questions about what we choose to pay attention to. The passengers of the Titan each paid $250,000 to make the dramatic dive to the wreckage of the Titanic. Meanwhile, the passengers of the ship that sank off the coast of Greece were migrants from Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. They were fleeing conflict, oppression, and climate change in search of opportunity in Europe, and they now join an estimated 27,000 other drowned migrants in what Pope Francis has called "a vast cemetery" at the bottom of the Mediterranean.

One story has been the subject of global fascination and round-the-clock coverage. The other has barely registered a blip. Which again begs questions about who we choose to see, and who we choose care about.

This weekend we will continue our journey through the Book of Genesis, and our story features a remarkable woman named Hagar. Hagar was Sarah's slave, and when Sarah remained childless she "gave" Hagar to Abraham so that he could father a child. But even though it was her idea, Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar and her child, and forces them to be driven out from the camp. The story is enormously uncomfortable, and urges us to consider the plight of so many women around the world who are treated disposably, used and then cast off.

But Hagar, of all people, is the first person in the Bible to give God a name. Not Abraham or Sarah or any of the supposedly "heroic" figures of the story, but an abused, despised, and abandoned person – she is the first one in Scripture to name God.

And the name she gives God is El Roi, which means "God Who Sees Me" (Genesis 16:13).

Our God sees all the Hagars of the world, all the pitiable souls whose lives are treated expendably, and whose tragic deaths barely merit a blip in the news cycle. Our God sees every migrant as they desperately pursue hope and opportunity, every woman who has been trafficked, every person who the world neglects. Jesus says that every hair on our heads is numbered by God – that's how closely and carefully God sees us. Every hair of every head, wherever they are in the world, whatever their story. Our God sees them.

El Roi, open our eyes to see the world as you see it, and especially all the people the world so often neglects, for you have numbered the hairs on their heads, just as you have numbered ours. Amen.

Father Casey