Seeing God’s face

“VULTUM tuum, Domine, requiram.” That’s a psalm which means, “I long to see
your face, O Lord.” (26/27,8)

It expresses a sentiment embedded in the hearts of all of us. We are aware of it in varying degrees. It’s most intense among the saints who have developed a great intimacy with God in the world.

St. Josemaria Escriva, Opus Dei founder, for example, repeated this psalm often as his ejaculatory prayer in the last year of his life. He somehow knew he was going, and he strongly felt the urge to see God’s face.

Seeing God’s face, at least as an expression, is catching fire recently because the late Pope John Paul II talked a lot about it. The present Pope, Benedict XVI, also talks about looking for the face of Jesus, especially in his book, Jesus of Nazareth.

In many dioceses in our country today, I heard that it has become the theme
of their pastoral thrust for this year or next. Many have adapted it as their motto. But it has to be understood properly.

When we talk about God’s face, we don’t mainly mean the physical face of
God, since God has no body. Even if the Son of God became man and lived historically with us in Jesus Christ, and therefore must have a face, this is not what we really mean.

Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of God’s revelation, did not waste time talking about how he looked. He did not make any effort to leave us at least a sketch of his face, so we’d know how God looked.

Certainly Jesus’ face and his physical appearance have great value. We have tried to reconstruct them using various processes. We now even have the image of Jesus in modern get-up, complete with motorbike and guitar. But this is not what we mean when we talk about seeing God’s face.

Seeing God’s face refers more to our effort, always with the help of grace, to know God’s mind and will as Jesus revealed. And more than knowing them, it is to love them to such an extent that we identify ourselves with them.

In this way, we become like him, actualizing what St. John in his first letter said: “Now we are the children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when He appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him just as he is.” (3,2)

From these words, we should understand that seeing God’s face goes together with resembling ourselves with him. We can see him only when we identify ourselves with him. The goal to reach is what St. Paul once expressed: when God becomes “all in all” in us. (1 Cor 15,28)

It’s when we attain a certain degree of communion with him, a term we should be more familiar with, that we can see him. That’s when we recover and perfect our dignity as God’s children, created in his image and likeness.

Our task in our earthly life is to actuate this image and likeness of God that we have in ourselves. This involves having to go beyond our purely natural condition with its limitations insofar as our supernatural calling is concerned.

Besides, we have to purify and recover that image and likeness that has been distorted by sin, both the original sin and our personal sins.

Our capacity to see and resemble him certainly is not a matter of our physical and bodily power. This capacity lies more in our spiritual faculties, that is, our intelligence and will, that have to be actuated by grace, and everything that grace involves—doctrine, sacraments, ascetical struggle, etc.

That’s why seeing God’s face necessarily involves the proper use of our intelligence and will, going into the study of Christ’s doctrine, applying it in our lives, availing of the sacraments, submitting ourselves to the hierarchy of the Church, waging ascetical struggle, developing virtues, etc.

We have to be wary of allowing these spiritual faculties to be dominated by
mere feelings and emotions. They have to be fed by faith as revealed by Christ and taught by the Church. That’s what they ultimately are meant for.