How can we reflect the image of God?

The Gospel passage for today’s celebration provides a method for responding to this call. When we live according to the beatitudes, a life which entails accepting with faith the struggles that come our way, we come to resemble Christ.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria offered a beautiful image for this teaching. He imagined that each human life was a portrait of God. Because of spiritual blindness, most of these portraits were poorly executed. Some even suffered from outside forces that tarnished and damaged the canvas or frame. Instead of discarding the portraits, God sent the son to sit as a model for a second painting. The incarnate son gives us a clearer image of the divine after which to fashion our lives.

Our great work, then, is to model our lives on the life of Jesus in the Gospels. In today’s Gospel passage, the beatitudes guide our brushstrokes. Each beatitude is a path to grace, and each time we live one out, the image of Christ shines through a little brighter.

This is no easy task. Although each beatitude promises a different encounter with grace, the path to each of those encounters often comes through suffering. This is the paradox of Christian life. To encounter the grace we desire, we have to face struggles we might otherwise have tried to avoid. Some of these are the struggles of human existence: poverty, grief, humiliation. Others are struggles we take on to advance the kingdom: living righteously, making peace with and among enemies, showing mercy. Although some of these actions might require exceptional effort, none require extraordinary searching. Opportunities to live the beatitudes come our way each day. It is up to us to accept the grace that is being offered.

These beatitudes are insights from Jesus’ own spiritual life. He struggled in the ways he describes, but in each struggle he found the grace he promises us. Many of the great saints typify one or more of the beatitudes. St. Francis of Assisi, son of a wealthy family, founded an entire spiritual tradition around poverty—Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven! St. Catherine of Siena braved an assassination attempt and worked tirelessly to end division in the church—Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God! St. Ignatius Loyola, whose dynamic interior life both fascinated and frightened him, developed spiritual techniques to keep his attention fixed on God—Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God! St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who lived in obscurity, has shared her love of Christ with people all over the globe—Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land!

The church understands the fundamental ministry of the saints to be holiness itself. This is holiness as Jesus taught it: to stand with the poor and meek, to mourn and show mercy, to burn with a desire to set the world aright and establish peace, to struggle and suffer for God and for each other, and in so doing to become a little more like God, who became like one of us.