-
August 4, 2023Disfigured to Transfigured
Every person has an intrinsic desire to be attractive to others. God has made the human heart with this “desire to be desired.” We all want to be liked and accepted by others. We want to be known and loved by “the other,” and we want to know and love the other. This is one definition of intimacy: to know and love and to be known and loved.
Sadly, the Original Sin of Adam and Eve gravely wounded and disordered this holy desire. The human person became “disfigured” in every part of their being: mind, heart, soul, and body. This is why, for example, our bodies get older and more fragile. We get sick more often and the body weakens, along the way to death. But we can also be sick in the other parts of our being…the mind, the heart, and the soul.
God’s original justice (which was the state of things before original sin) provided for the human person to be magnificently beautiful in every part of their being. And now, God has sent Jesus to us to change our disfigurement to transfigurement. The human person was created to shine!
When a person truly strives to live their Catholic Christianity; when they really make an effort to pray every day, to come to know and love Jesus, to have a personal relationship with Him, their soul begins to shine more and more. I like to stress that the most beautiful people in every parish are not the 18-year-old persons with strong, beautiful bodies, but the 80-year-old persons with strong, beautiful minds, hearts, and souls. Eighty years of prayer, suffering, forgiving others, coming to Holy Mass, persevering and generously caring for others has changed their souls and made them truly beautiful. This is what we call “Christ-likeness.” The goodness literally shines from their eyes!
Christ-likeness is the plan of God for all of us. It is reachable only through grace though we have to do our part also. We have to make the effort to be a Christian.
There is nothing or no one who is so disfigured that the grace of Christ cannot transfigure or fix them. Let’s think and pray about this together as we read the Gospel of the Transfiguration.
Fr. Brett Brannen
Pastor
