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How do we know all this for sure? It's in their eyes. And again, it is in Matthew 6. If there is one thing we know for sure about Harry, it is that he has his mother's eyes. Her green eyes. How many times are we told how Harry's green eyes are the same as his mother's? Contrast them with Snape's eyes. His dark eyes. How many times do we see Snape look into Harry's eyes? Always, we think, he looks with hatred. But really Snape looks into Harry's eyes feeling conflicted. Snape sees the eyes of Lily Evans, whom he has always loved with devotion. Also Snape sees Harry Potter, whom he despises. For Snape, Harry personifies all that he cannot possess, the love of Lily and a position of earthly power. Harry reminds Snape what his choice to serve himself and Dark Magic has cost him. In Deathly Hallows we see the two sets of eyes face off one last time as Snape dies while looking at Harry. "The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish." And so we must again turn to the Gospel of Saint Matthew, "If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (Matthew 6:24). Dumbledore had pitied Snape, his best quality — his love for Lily Evans — was his most hidden secret. "My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?" Love is no possession. Love cannot be hidden as a dark secret, a possession for oneself alone. If love is hidden behind darkness, how great is the darkness indeed.

Though Snape's eyes go forever dark, Harry's eyes remain bright, perhaps even shine more than at any time before. "Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more aware of his own living body than ever before," and for the first time he "appreciated what a miracle he was." In the culmination of knowledge he gains after Snape's death, Harry knows that he must die as a sacrifice. Harry must walk willingly, eyes wide open, to his death at the hands of Voldemort. He must choose to love his friends above himself and sacrifice himself to save them. He leaves for the Forbidden Forest where Voldemort is waiting. As he walks he discovers the last of the Deathly Hallows, the Resurrection Stone. And by its power those close to him who have died return and walk with him for a while. Harry's mother joins him. "She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough … His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough." Why is it enough for both of them to look into each others' eyes forever? Is it just the love of a mother and a son that they see? I contend it is more.

Lily and Harry see not only each others' eyes and the love they have for each other, but also the profound place of loving sacrifice to which each of them have come. It is not enough that they are mother and son. It is "enough" that they both give the truest love, sacrificial love. And their eyes tell them so. "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light" (Matthew 6:22). That light, the light of Lily's and Harry's eyes, comes only from one source, sacrificial love. And their sacrificial love, like all sacrificial love, comes only after everything else - possessions and self-interest and temptations, everything - is set aside for love's sake.

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August (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51