Made for Glory
Flick down a Facebook feed or through a magazine in a waiting room and you will come across at least one or two pieces on ‘self-improvement’: how to lose weight, get great hair or find a better lover. You are also likely to find an article or two on a ‘celebrity’, someone who had achieved fame motor-racing, novel-writing or even just by being outrageous. These writings reveal something very deep about us: we want glory and we want to give glory to others…and that is a good thing.
On Monday of this week, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration. ‘The what?’, I hear some of you saying. This is the event, when for a few moments, Jesus revealed his glory to three of his disciples, Peter, James and John. The glory of heaven radiated out of the body of Jesus and the disciples were gob smacked. Overcome at what they saw, they wanted in. They wanted to stay. Of course, it didn’t happen that way. The glory passed and they went down the mountain to lives as ordinary as before…but they were changed. Writing years later, St Peter described what had happened and showed how it changed him and directed his life.
Our desire for glory can direct our lives as well. Sometimes our passions and desires can seem silly, or dangerous or unimportant but if we sift beneath the surface, they can reveal hidden depths to our hearts. Take the desire to be admired. We are made for this. It is just that it gets side-tracked onto things like ‘great hair’ or ‘summer body’. The God who created us and continues to create us, wants his glory to flow through us. He desires to admire us, just as he did Jesus on the mountain. For this to happen, we have to begin by letting ourselves be in God’s presence and naming ourselves as ‘Beloved of God’. And then allowing that to direct our lives.
Loving Father, you have made me for glory. As I look to the life of Jesus, may the glory that shone in him, radiant in my live in the way I love those around me. I ask this in his name, confident that you will hear me.
Sr Kym Harris osb