A few weeks ago, we gathered at morning prayer to examine our conscience with a few questions about our actions this Lent. Among the questions about lying, praying, helping, swearing, injuring or indulging was a question about pouting. Do you pout and find it hard to be positive? Is pouting a sin? This required some thought. What provokes pouting? I didn’t get what I wanted. I am disappointed about something. I am telling myself that I am left out or people are talking about me. We came to the conclusion that pouting is a deep dive into negative land. Why is that sinful? Who are we listening to when we are getting darker and darker thoughts? OOHHH! Maybe pouting is a sin. Or the beginning of sin, at least. So what can we do to get those thoughts out of our mind and far away from our heart? We came up with several: pray, go to church, think about how much we are loved, decide that we can think about our gifts of hope, love, grace and peace. Maybe pouting is just a reminder to get closer to God. To remember that we are made in His image.
”Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful.”
God’s Image and Likeness
This spiritual aspect of human nature is the reason we are described, both in Scripture and Tradition, as being made in God’s image and likeness. When God declares he will create humanity “in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen 1:26), this does not refer to a physical likeness; it refers to certain God-given capacities which are not only proper to our human nature but also unique to it. Put simply, we are made in God’s image because we alone have been made capable of knowing and loving as God does. We alone, “of all visible creatures” are “called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life” (CCC 356).
Through Christ, we learn not only that God is good, but that we too are good: that everything about us that makes us truly human is given to us by God as a reflection, an image, of His own pre-eminent goodness.
To be created in God’s image and likeness, and to have had that image restored by the grace of Christ, is a call to live human life fully, authentically and joyfully. So do not fall victim to complacency and arrogance or pouting. Open your eyes to living in God’s image as a light of Christ.
God Bless,
Anne Atkin, principal
