I don’t know about you, but most of my life growing up I never considered myself as beautiful. None of my girl friends really were either. We weren’t part of the homecoming court or a cheerleader. So what to do with all that I’ve been sharing about beauty? Hopefully, most of us have made the important transition in our thinking to the realization that beauty is more than skin deep, as they say. It’s the beauty of the soul, of the spirit that is most important.
Unfortunately, too many of us who “know that in our heads” still feel like we fall short. We don’t feel all that beautiful in our souls. But the Christian life is not a beauty pageant. Our beauty comes from within, from God who dwells within us. St. Augustine says in one of his commentaries:
What then is this love that makes the loving soul beautiful? God, who is always beautiful, who never loses his beauty, who never changes: he loved us first, he who is always beautiful. And what were we when he loved us if not ugly and disfigured? But he did not love us to leave us to our ugliness but to change us and, disfigured as we were, to make us beautiful.
It’s almost like sunbathing. We turn ourselves toward Him, and it is He who makes us beautiful. We just need to be there in His presence. It’s the sun that makes us tan; it’s the Son who makes us beautiful. It’s not what we do, but what He does. Fr. Blaise Arminjon in his Cantata of Love addresses this very point in his commentary on Song of Songs 4.1 “How beautiful you are, my love, how beautiful you are”:
This is why the Bride [and we are each His bride] would be quite wrong in worrying whether she is truly lovable or not or worthy or not of love since all her beauty is made of her resemblance to her Bridegroom, whole holy face was engraved in her since the very first day and wants to be more and more deeply engraved in her. Thérèse of Lisieux understands this very well when she reads this verse of the Song: ‘Adorable face of Jesus, only beauty ravishing my heart, deign to imprint on me your divine resemblance so that you may not be able to look into my soul without seeing yourself.’
To be continued tomorrow . . .
Witnesses to Hope 
Thanks Sr. Dorcee!!! Soo inspired and refreshed by your blog. It is a real gift to me and many. Also you are very beautiful…
A story of beauty.
Michaela age 2 was jumping on my bed. I told her than when she is 3 she can’t jump on my bed any more. “Ok, Mamo,” she said, still jumping. She had sunglasses on and they fell off. I put the small sunglasses on my very bald head, as you know, and said , “Mamo probably looks like an alien with sunglasses and no hair.” Michaela sat down, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Mamo, you look adorable.” Oh, to see the world as a child. They see only goodness. Praise the Lord, may he keep us humble before him to have the spirit of a child.
Thank for this wonderful story!