Two Faces of Heaven

Seeing the face of God and our own true faces

07/11/2017

Genesis 32:23-33 In the course of the night, Jacob arose, took his two wives,  with the two maidservants and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had taken them across the stream and had brought over all his possessions, Jacob was left there alone. Then some man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When the man saw that he could not prevail over him, he struck Jacob's hip at its socket, so that the hip socket was wrenched as they wrestled. The man then said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go until you bless me." The man asked, "What is your name?" He answered, "Jacob." Then the man said, "You shall no longer be spoken of as Jacob, but as Israel, because you have contended with divine and human beings and have prevailed." Jacob then asked him, "Do tell me your name, please." He answered, "Why should you want to know my name?" With that, he bade him farewell. Jacob named the place Peniel, "Because I have seen God face to face," he said, "yet my life has been spared."

            Few things are as fascinating as the human face, especially our own face. That’s why we cannot walk by a mirror without glancing at our own face. Parents cannot stop staring at the face of their newborn baby, and feel they see heaven itself in their morning smiles. Lovers love to look on each other’s faces, and can’t take their eyes off each other (or their hands off each other). Indeed, Juliet thought Romeo would make even heaven’s face more beautiful when she said, “And when I shall die / Take him and cut him out in little stars / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun” (Romeo and Juliet, III, 2). Have you seen Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece, his portrait of the Mona Lisa? He captured something timeless in her subtle smile. I painted the Mona Lisa once, too, but I was using a paint-by-numbers art set, and it was pretty good. In Homer’s Iliad, the Trojan War was waged over the beauty of lovely Helen, who was famed to have “a face that could launch a thousand ships.” The human face is hugely fascinating.

           In the first reading today, Jacob gets a golden opportunity to glimpse the face of God. He wrestles all night with an angel, and in the morning, when the angel departs, Jacob names the place “Peniel.” Why? Jacob explains why: “Because I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.” In other words, seeing the face of God is not going to be easy – it will be hard, it will require a struggle, indeed, you must first “wrestle with God.” And in the process of this struggle, Jacob is changed, too, symbolized by his new name, “Israel.” That is, he is given a new identity, his true identity. Jacob can see his own face for the first time after this night’s struggle. When we wrestle with God, we are able to see two faces: we see God’s face for the first time, but we also can see our own face for the first time.

           My friends, doesn’t Genesis 32 capture in a chapter the whole journey of Christian life? In other words, isn’t our whole life one mighty, long night’s struggle with angels, so that when this night ends, when we wake eternally in the light of heaven, we can see the face of God? St. Teresa of Avila, the great Carmelite mystic, who wrestled like few other Christians have with God, described life perfectly when she quipped, “It’s like a bad night in a bad inn.” This is how we should see our own struggles – the untimely death of a loved one, the unexpected diagnosis of cancer, the loss of a job, the heartache of a divorce, the difficulties of discerning a vocation, the doubts of faith, the nagging sin we cannot overcome, “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” as Hamlet opined (Hamlet, III, 1). This is how we wrestle with angels, this is our Christian life; get used to it.

            But if we fight this good fight of faith, our reward will be the same as that of Jacob, when this night of earthly life ends with the dawn of heaven’s day, we will see the Face of God. And what will be equally as surprising, although not nearly as beautiful, is that we will finally see our own face, our true identity (which we looked for in vain in all those mirrors). And by the way, our face will be so alluring and our smile so subtle, that not even Leonardo DaVinci will be able to paint it, not even using a paint-by-numbers set.

Praised be Jesus Christ!