© 1986 Túrelio (via Wikimedia-Commons), 1986 / , via Wikimedia Commons
© 1986 Túrelio (via Wikimedia-Commons), 1986 / , via Wikimedia Commons

“Do you think it’s wrong to have a facelift?” a girlfriend asked as we sat on the beach house sofa in our pajamas, sipping coffee and looking out the window at the boats in the harbor. We were on retreat with a wonderful band of women, and as it frequently happens with women, the subject turned to beauty.

“I had the same conversation with my sister just last week,” I replied. “I’ll tell you what I told her. I don’t think it’s ‘wrong’ to have a facelift, but my desire is to be so full of God’s love that it shines through my face so I don’t NEED a facelift,” I continued.

Our culture’s preoccupation with physical beauty is but one sign that we’re living from the outside in, instead of from the inside out. But as Christians, we’re meant to live from the inside out, letting the love of Christ inhabit us so fully that it radiates within us and shows up on our faces as “glory.”

Think about Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. She was not “beautiful” by the world’s standards. But she was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. Why? She was overflowing with the love of God and it showed on her face.   Such beauty is not exclusive to women.

I often think of Moses, who enjoyed such personal intimacy with God that he spoke with God “face to face” (Ex. 33:11). Moses’ face became so radiant when he conversed with the Lord that he had to veil his face to come into the presence of the Israelites. That manifestation of glory foreshadowed the glory of Christ, who is the very “imprint” of God’s being, and who reveals to us in flesh and blood the face of God (Hebrews 1:3-4). If we want to see God, we are to look at Christ. And if we want to look like God, we are to become like Christ. How? St. Augustine gave us the secret: we become what we contemplate.

We contemplate Christ by spending time with Him in prayer, and by meditating on His Word and His presence. We contemplate Christ by making Him our best friend and top priority in life, and by learning all we can about who He is. We contemplate Christ by serving others, as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta demonstrated so wonderfully through her life’s work, wherein she saw the face of Christ in the “poorest of the poor.”

When we contemplate Christ, we become Christ-like, and we take on His beautiful countenance. Nowhere have I seen this truth manifested more evidently than on the faces of the recovering drug addicts of Communita Cenacolo, a lay Catholic Community that ministers to those in bondage to addiction. The residents of the Community usually arrive there looking beat up, strung out, and exhausted. And indeed they are. Their faces bear witness to the hell they’ve lived in the grip of drugs, which has become their main obsession.

I have pictures of my own son the day he arrived at Cenacolo, wearing black circles under his eyes and an almost palpable shadow of darkness on his face. His face looked markedly different when I saw him months later, not because he was being “rehabbed,” but because he was being “restored.” He was returning to the truth that he is a beloved child of God—a child in whom God delights—in large part by spending hours a day before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He was becoming what he meditated upon, and his face told the tale. Over the years, I’ve heard many parents echo the same amazement when they see their children’s faces for the first time after they enter the Community, because the change in their faces is nothing short of remarkable.

Do you want to be beautiful? Unveil your face and gaze upon the face of the Lord, that He may transform you from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:13). His love is a beauty treatment that’s not only free—it has lasting benefits.

Look to Him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame.   Psalm 34:6

3 Replies to “God’s Love Is The Best Beauty Treatment”

  1. By the way, I am reading an interview with the French novelist Michel Houellebecq which relates to our topic here, and it prompts me to paste it and say, aren’t we glad we’re Catholic? Aren’t we glad that we need not view our old selves, our old bodies, our old faces, as the World does?
    http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fiction-no-206-michel-houellebecq

    “I am persuaded that feminism is not at the root of political correctness. The actual source is much nastier and dares not speak its name, which is simply hatred for old people. The question of domination between men and women is relatively secondary—important but still secondary—compared to what I tried to capture in this novel, which is that we are now trapped in a world of kids. Old kids. The disappearance of patrimonial transmission means that an old guy today is just a useless ruin. The thing we value most of all is youth, which means that life automatically becomes depressing, because life consists, on the whole, of getting old.”

    1. Janet, I love your commentary and it appears that you are indeed growing older with grace and beauty. Yes indeed, we suffer from a lack of love and appreciation for the elderly, and there is an obsession in this culture with staying young. That’s why I feel the need to reject the pressure to surgically alter my face to look “younger.” And maybe that’s my political statement. By the way, my mother in law recently died at 97 and her face was absolutely radiant and beautiful. Full of the love of God. I want to be just like her when I grow up!

  2. This is a lovely post! I’ve been thinking about this topic recently. I am seventy (that seems impossible). I have never been known as a beautiful woman. Not ugly, either, just sort of inbetween. (My beauty queen mother sometimes speculated aloud, ruefully, as to why her daughters looked like their father instead of her.) Lucky for me I’ve always been slim and that helped make me less unfortunate, and so did my two master’s degrees.

    But lately there seems to be some kind of change in the wind. A total stranger on Christmas Eve in a long, weary line at the grocery store suddenly said to me, ‘You must have been a real heartbreaker as a girl, you are so attractive.’ Now, she spoke to me at all because I had just let a person with only one item go in front of me in the line. Thinking about it, I thought the kindness might have showed on my face, or at least she was generously disposed because of my gesture. But then just a couple of days later, someone else said something similar, altho I have forgotten the exact circumstances.

    So after those events, I was thinking that, after a certain age, possibly we create our faces from our Faith? Maybe I’m not the girl I was? Maybe I’m better? Not that I have so very much Faith, but I do try to help others as I go about, in spite of the fact that I’m one of those mean old traddy Catholics.

    But then a third time someone remarked on ‘how well’ I was aging, and added, ‘It’s your hair.’ Oh! Well, true, my hair is greying in a quite nice pattern. Bright white tendrils have followed the curving line of a cowlick on both temples; you’d have to pay folding cash for highlights like that.

    I’m going to keep on trying to be kind, just in case, though. I know it’s all vanity, but we’re girls! I might even go for the facelift!

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