Face It: You Are Who You Are

There are all types of ways to speak of someone’s life. If you were with people who did not know you and asked to tell about yourself, you would have many ways you could go. Many ways, indeed, because you are not just one thing, you are an amalgam of many things. You were born somewhere, into some family. You have learned to do certain things and perhaps have taken up a vocation. Perhaps you have an avocation. I know a lawyer who loves to translate Greek texts. I know a teacher who is a singer and an iconographer. I know a botanist who creates stained glass art and is a bluegrass musician. You might identify yourself with Christ. You might align with a group of Christians: Episcopalians or some such flock.

You are a gem with many facets and you could describe yourself from many angles. The light shines variously from you. Take a guess who I am describing from what follows: He was the son of a deacon and grandson of a bishop. Captured by pirates, he was reduced to slavery for six years before escaping, running, and voyaging as a fugitive.  At times near starvation, he endured various adventures in a strange land. A regret he carried throughout his life was how he had missed out on “higher education”. Though he had training of a sort for his eventual vocation, he thought of himself as a man of little learning.

Let me take another approach describing this figure, using the popularly attested features of his life. He was a fifth-century Christian bishop and missionary, the apostle of Ireland, This wonder-worker is told to have driven the snakes out of the land, and to have taught of the Trinity using the shape of the shamrock. If you fail to wear green on his feast day, you could suffer being pinched, the pain of which might be remedied by a nice serving of Guinness stout. The identifiers that are more broadly known today are not the ones Patrick held and knew most intimately: I am guessing.

There would be no one way to describe you. Your face is an icon of who you are as a whole. It is said the face is a map of who we are and “everywhere” we have been. The Irish thinker and poet John O’Donnohue carries this further:

The human face is an artistic achievement. On such a small surface an incredible variety and intensity of presence can be expressed. This breadth of presence overflows the limitation of the physical form…Each face is a particular intensity of human presence…The face always reveals the soul; it is where the divinity of the inner life finds an echo and image. When you behold someone’s face, you are gazing deeply into that person’s life.  —John O’Donohue, Anam Ċara, HarperCollins, New York, pp. 38-39

Is it true what St. Paul voices in the love chapter, from that first letter to the Corinthians? He says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part: then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) Extrapolate from that: Will we behold Christ, face to face? What do you see now when you imagine looking into the face of Christ? Like you, Jesus also was not just one simple set of realities.  He was the one who powerfully healed and evocatively taught. He was also one who suffered. He was the high priest of God, who humanly trained for his priesthood through his human vulnerability. Note what we will have as our Sunday Epistle lesson:

Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him,

    “You are my Son,
    today I have begotten you”;

as he says also in another place,

    “You are a priest forever,
    according to the order of Melchizedek.”

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.  —Hebrews 5:5-10

When we see the face of Jesus we see the Resurrected One who came into the upper room and stood with his disciples, telling them “Peace be with you.” We also see the one who in the Garden of Gethsemane prayed to his heavenly Father to allow him to pass on the cup of suffering that was about to be handed to him. In his true humanity, accepting the cup, despite his agony, shaped him. In his modeling of perfect obedience, he teaches us obedience even in the experience of our suffering. Like the Greeks that came looking for Jesus (John 12:20-21), asking his Philip and Andrew to introduce them to him, so we too wish to see Jesus. Seeing him, we see many things, many remarkable things.

There are all kinds of ways you could tell another about yourself. Public information, interests, history, passions, and aspirations might come into the story. Let me tell you, there is a true feature which is important to add. This is for sure, and I wish I could tell you face to face: you are loved.