From Today's Mass

In case you weren't able to make Mass this morning, I highly recommend the readings (Jan 3: 1 Jn 2:29-3:6; Ps 98; Jn 1:29-34) to you. Especially the reading St. John's first epistle is very beautiful. Here is part of it:

The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.

Already we are adopted into being children of the Eternal Father, as brothers of Christ in the Holy Spirit. But what He wants to transform us into, if only we will let Him... that has yet to be seen. He wants to bring us from one glory to another, greater glory, as St. Paul says elsewhere (2 Cor 3:18). As we come to behold God more clearly, we are transformed in the beholding. At the end, when we "see him as he is," we will be fully, finally transformed. It is this hope of heaven that drives us Christians on in our thirst for sanctity. The purification of our hearts, our motivations, our desires, our goals, so that everything depraved is burnt out, everything extrinsic set on the back burner, and everything lesser made subject to the Greatest Good - this purification is the cause, path, and fruit of our sanctity.