Resembling Jesus

I once wrote an article about several women residents of a local nursing home. In researching the piece, I discovered that they had grown up in the same neighborhood as my grandmother, and that one of the women was, in fact, my grandmother’s dearest childhood friend.

When I visited this woman to take her photograph, she took a long look at my face, and I could see in her eyes that she was reaching back in her memory across the years.

She said: “You resemble her.”

I wept on the way home.

My grandmother died when I was nine, and for the last several years of her life she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. I have always deeply grieved the time we lost, the relationship we could have had. I have hazy fragments of memory from before her illness that lead me to believe we loved each other very much.

Being told I look like my grandmother by someone who knew her well — being identified as belonging to her in some way — was one of the more beautiful things to happen to me.

When we love someone, we want to be associated with them. We want to be recognized as theirs somehow. And if we love Christ, we should want to be known as belonging to him. We should want those who see us to know we are his.

The only way we can resemble Jesus is through love. It is his most recognizable quality, his most famous trait. This is how all will know that you are my disciples.

As Catholics, we are always talking about finding ways to live our faith boldly, unapologetically, publicly. Good — we should! But if we want people to know we are Catholic, we should love them. Bravely. Recklessly. Sacrificially.

As he loves us.

©LPi