“When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4)
What does it mean, to “appear in glory”? Will not your face shine with the light of that glory, so that your personality will come out and express itself by the radiance of your face? Consider the fact that those who should have recognized the Lord Jesus instantaneously following the crucifixion, burial and resurrection were not able to do so. Mary Magdalene, who had gazed upon Him with gratitude and love time and again, as had the apostles, yet had to receive some sign that it was indeed Christ.
Just as there is a name for each of us that will be revealed after this lifetime [Revelation 2:17], so there is a face that can describe who we truly are in God’s mind. That face expresses our personality free of all the accretions that come with sinfulness. It’s why St. Paul added to the above statement: “Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature” (Colossians 3:5). Just as purity radiates from a face filled with glory, so a face marked with sinfulness is a mask worn to disguise a heart of darkness. T.S. Eliot presents the hypocrisy that disguises a person from knowing his genuine self and the real face of others:
“There will be time; there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
We even use the phrase: “Makeup.” We use equipment to make up our faces to present to the world as if it were our real face; but the church is the place where we find, greet and welcome our true selves in the mirror and in the mirrors of the eyes of those we love and who love us in return. When the apostles call us to “Greet each other with a holy kiss” [I Corinthians 16:20; II Corinthians 13:12; I Peter 5:14], they tell us to recognize the icon within the spiritual brother and sister, just as we do to the icons of those whose faces of glory shine forth to inspire us with the reminder that we too are bearers of God’s image. We use incense in our worship for the same reason. The deacon or priest censes all the icons in the church—those on the walls or on tables, those standing and alive on the earth.
Both holy kisses and incense are incentives to become who we are in the mind of the Lord. Rather than vanity or empty praise, it calls us to close the gap between the one whom we think we are or strive to become according to the world’s values and go deeper into our souls and search out the true self that is irreplaceable in God’s plan for the salvation of all humanity.
Evil has no substance or existence. Only what is good, true and genuine exists in the real sense, which means lives now and forever. Those who make a game of life, either trying to impress others to compensate for a low self image, or whose goals never transcend what we share with animals—i.e., creature comforts, eating, sexual relations, attention and fleeting fame—are forced by their values to wear masks, because they have either forgotten or never discovered the beauty of the inner self. Put another way: What within you will follow you beyond the grave? What ought to be worthy of sharing the glory that will shine from your spiritual face when you go with the Lord Jesus as He presents you by the energy of the Holy Spirit to appear before His heavenly Father? What is truly “you” and what is it you pretend to be, that is not “you” at all? That question only you with the help of the Holy Trinity can discover.