IN US IS ENGRAVED THE IMAGE

“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”

Now, I could always go into minute detail about the depth of this passage, the revelation of the Trinity in this small phrase, the great honour bestowed upon mankind to be made in the image of the Almighty, the wonder of such words traversing time from Moses to this very moment, and so forth. Because, as we can all agree, I am obviously the most qualified in this room to speak of such subjects.

I will speak, however, of what I do know. I live in a big city, and as in every big city, there are many, and I mean many, homeless people. So many, in fact, that I have even become familiar with a few. I can readily recognize the lady who sits in front of the drugstore, even when she is strolling about away from her usual spot. I know the two beggars who sit on opposite sides of the street, one with a cane, the other surrounded with books. I know the nice young man who sits on a blanket in front of an abandoned store with two great, big, and handsome black dogs, who prefers to greet every passerby than to beg for a morsel. I also know the man covered in sores, who rocks back and forth, crying, “I’m cold” in the winter, and “I’m hungry” in the summer.

I’ve come to know the smell of homelessness, decay, and of the forgotten. It makes the words spoken at memorials, “May their memory be eternal,” all the more powerful. The world has forgotten these people. The world has decided that these people were no longer quite human, the fringes in a golden society. Yet it was with them that Christ came and spent time. It is people like them to whom the greatest honours have been given in the history of the saints. They, just like us, are blessed with this thing that not many of us grasp, least of all me: the image of God.

I still do not understand this marvel: to be made in the image of God. It was something I brushed off as an old Sunday School story for the longest time. It was as an afterthought, a buzzing in the background, as irrelevant as the pitter-patter of the rain outside my window. I blame this generation of which I am a part. We have been desensitized to the wonders of the world around us, finding what is in our hands – our phones – much worthier of our attention. The more I think about the image of God, however, the more it amazes me. To this day, I don’t quite grasp the magnificence of the honour bestowed upon man. So, I will use the words of one who is far wiser than me, St. Gregory of Nysa:

O marvellous! A sun is made, and no counsel precedes; a heaven likewise; and to these no single thing in creation is equal. So great a wonder is formed by a word alone, and the saying indicates neither when, nor how, nor any such detail. So too in all particular cases, the æther, the stars, the intermediate air, the sea, the earth, the animals, the plants – all are brought into being with a word, while only to the making of man does the Maker of all draw near with circumspection.

Imagine! The beggar was made by God to be a king! We were made to rule this world! And look! We do! Who else but man has done what he wants with our natural resources, sucked dry the earth of its oil, razed clean the forests of its trees, or better yet, set the whole on fire? We have made a garbage dump of that which God has given us to be stewards. Then there are our fellow men, who hold the same honour and same image as us, yet some live in abundant, yes, even excessive riches, and others don’t have anything to quench their thirst.

So how can we, who boast of having the image of God within us, fall so short of all that is good and true? As St. John of Damascus wrote: “The expression ‘according to the image’ indicates that which is reasonable and endowed with free will, while the expression ‘according to the likeness’ denotes assimilation through virtue, in as far as this is possible.” The tragedy of Adam and Eve is no secret: we are fallen from a pedestal that was once our original form. Only through Christ and His resurrection are we given the opportunity to reclaim the likeness once lost, for Adam was redeemed in the New Adam, and with him, all of mankind. Now, only virtues and a life of holiness promise to regain for us those heavenly, good things lost in the Garden of Eden.

So, in being given the very image of God in us, we were given a great responsibility: to attain His likeness. What is His likeness? Are we to change our physical selves to resemble the ideal human shape as advertised by the media? Is His likeness attained by surpassing human limits, as we once tried to do at Babel? Is it something else? Who else can we turn to, but the prototype of man, with whose very image we were endowed, Christ Himself? For this is what we have strived for, ever since the fall, to live and to die by His example; that is our salvation.

Yet “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle . . .” (Mark 10:25). I am the prime example. I ignore the woman begging in front of the drug store, but Christ said: “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Mathew 25: 40). I turn my face away from the man who says that he’s hungry, and the words, “For I was hungry and you gave

Me no food” echo (Mathew 25: 42). I am repulsed by the nice young man that greets me with his two dogs, and Christ accuses me, “I was a stranger and you did not take Me in” (Mathew 25:43).

Every day I fail to attain that blessed commandment of Christ: “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Mathew 5:48). I despair; God knows I despair. For we have forgotten the call to perfection. The world has told us to give up. The world has defined humans as imperfect, and that is true: we are far from perfect. Then I look at the saints. I see in icons an image of God and His likeness, looking at me through the eyes of St. Mary of Egypt, of St. Paul, of St. Photini, of King David, and many, many others. Though once great sinners, though none greater than myself, many have attained such spiritual heights that we can understand that anything is possible through Christ. For in us is engraved the image of the perfect God.

I would like to conclude with a more personal story. A very dear friend of mine is Muslim. She told me how she wasn’t particularly practicing a few years back. She believed in God and the Muslim prophets, but never truly felt the need to act upon that faith. One night, the summer before she left her home to study abroad at my university, she had a dream. In it, she dreamt that Christ had returned. Although, in the Muslim profession, they wrongly believe that Jesus is only man and not God, the dream bore fruit all the same. For, since that day, she began to pray. Of course, she prayed in the Muslim fashion, she was born and raised in a Muslim country, after all, knowing only the idea of what Christmas was because of television, let alone Easter. However, if a girl who I thought could not be further from the Church could envision Christ’s return, I started to grasp this notion that we all hold the image of God within us. For Christ still reaches out to her, and she still reaches out to Him in her prayers, whether she knows it or not. For, when she prays, she probably prays to the image she saw in her dream, as we would to an icon. God still reaches for every man and calls him back to his original glory. Perhaps if I reach out a little more, maybe the fallen likeness of God will become, as once before, akin to that of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, to whom is due all honour and glory, unto the ages of ages. Amen.