THURSDAY HOMILY: We Shall Be Like Him For We Shall See Him as He Is

By Deacon Keith Fournier
1/3/2013
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is - and as we are becoming.

We shall be like Him as we learn to live in Him and allow Him to live His Life within us and through us. This intimate relationship of communion begins at our own Baptism when He initiates the relationship, and continues daily as we live our lives by faith and respond to grace.

We are created in the Image of God and are being re-created in Jesus Christ

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CHESAPEAKE, VA. (Catholic Online) - This morning I would like to focus on the promise and invitation contained within the words of the epistle offered at today's Holy Mass:

"See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure." (1 John 3)

The Christian life can be summed up in one word, relationship. When we are baptized into Jesus Christ we enter into a relationship with the Father, in Him, through the Holy Spirit. We also enter into a relationship with all who are joined to Jesus Christ in His Body, the Church.

This relationship substantively and significantly changes our relationship to all men and women because we are joined, through our membership in His Body, in His ongoing redemptive mission. We are called to live in the heart of the Church for the sake of the world.

We can live in a communion of love with the living and Risen Jesus Christ which is dynamic and transformative. By grace - and our cooperation with it - we are being made new, re-created into His Image and likeness, beginning right now. "We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is" wrote the beloved disciple John.

Even as we live in the real world that is corrupted by the effects of sin and filled with all of its imperfection; as we struggle in our own fight against the allure of sin and the reality of evil; we can begin to "see Him as He is" and to become "like Him" through our continued progress in the spiritual life.

As we move toward the Feast of the Epihany, we should contemplate a vital truth concerning our Christian vocation. We are called to become a manifestation, an epiphany of God, in a world that is stumbling along in the darkness of sin. We are invited to renounce sin and embrace a life of sanctity. That is what the call to discipleship and the invitation to holiness is all about. The Christian life is dynamic.

Solid, classical, orthodox Christian theology helps us to understand this deep mystery of God's relationship to us and our relationship to Him. It teaches us that through our baptism we were incorporated into Christ and entered into His Mystical Body which is the Church. This Church is not simply a human congregation but rather a Communion.

We are invited - in the here and now - to live our lives, immersed in God. The Apostle Peter wrote in his second letter to the dispersed early Christians that we have become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Eastern Christianity, Orthodox and Catholic, speaks of this dynamic process as theosis. The insight the word entails informs the heart and soul of Eastern Christian spirituality.

The invitation to grow into the Image and likeness of God continues daily. Christianity is not simply about meeting Jesus, it is about the complete and total transformation of our lives in Him and, eventually, the transformation of the entire universe as it is made new in Him.

These insights are not meant for only for theologians, they are for you and me as we accept the invitation of the God of the whole universe who came into our midst as one of us in order to free us from sin and bring us into a communion of love. We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is - and as we are becoming.

- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Christian maturity, holiness, theosis, deification, spirituality, conversion, Year of Faith, Deacon Keith Fournier

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1 - 4 of 4 Comments

Anthony Coffey
4 months ago
It would seem that some have lost the sense of sin and the need to repent.

Repentance is a hatred of sin because it is an offence to God.
The motive for repenting is love of God. To repent of evil doing, because of mental suffering, or social loss, is not sincere repentance, because it is selfish, e.g. Judas Iscariot repented to the High Priests, by returning the thirty pieces of silver he had been paid for betraying Christ. He was not motivated by his love for God, but by his self disgust, for having betrayed Christ.

Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of paradise, because sin cannot coexist with God. While God is infinitely merciful, God has no tolerance of sin. To enter Heaven we must be sincere in repentance. It is noteworthy that Adam sinned [disobedience] because he feared God would take Eve, and leave him alone in the garden, therefore he valued companionship more than his love for God…impossible for Adam to repent at this time. For the Soul to be truly repentant it must be sincere, with a resolve not to sin again. Self - denial, i.e. Penance, shows sincerity to God. The effect of sincere repentance is peace and calm of conscience with intense consolation of soul.

The soul is reconciled to God by true repentance, which means confessing all mortal sins done by the penitent; repentance is made void, by refusing to admit a particular sin.
Some people experience great distress and anxiety wanting to confess their sins to a person strong enough to listen and understand, and not to despise them for the sins they have done. We are not ashamed to sin, but often we are ashamed to confess. It is vital for salvation that we obtain forgiveness of sins through the Sacrament of reconciliation.
Repentance is always necessary to be reconciled to God.

When Adam and Eve sinned they tried to hide from the Creator, because of self disgust, guilt and remorse but they were unrepentant, they blamed. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the devil in the form of a serpent. The reason for their denial was fear, fear of the consequences of having offended God. Their denial meant loss of Paradise because whenever in the future, if they sinned, they would deny.

This harsh chastisement was necessary to prove positive repentance in the future, in the hope, on reflection they would admit to having sinned. So began a history of relationship between God and Man culminating in the gift of the Church to the followers of Christ, this wonderful gift of Christ included the power to forgive sins.
It is the natural state of Man to sin, that is why we need to define Human Rights, if it is not a sin, then it is a Right. However the Sacrament of Reconciliation helps us to overcome our nature and achieve holiness of not sinning.
abey
4 months ago
He who was born in the flesh according to the law overcame death by his resurrection declares the Spirit, to be born of it like He is
Tom McGuire
4 months ago
In the Gospel John announces the Lamb of God. Are we not to be like the Lamb who is slain without defense? How are we like the Lamb when we fight with one another and speak about destroying the enemy? How are we like the lamb when we do not love our enemy? How are we like the Lamb when we cannot see God at work in the midst of people who do not know Christ and are not interested in knowing Him?
Anthony Coffey
4 months ago
We are created in the image and likeness of God.

One Mind, one Heart, one Soul, contained in a Body.

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