Friday, February 2: “God Intentions XIII”

1 John 3: 2: “Beloved, we are now children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.”

On this Feast of the Presentation, commemorating the day when the infant Christ appeared suddenly in the temple (Malachi 3: 1b), St. John presents to us this question of cause and effect: Is the cause the appearance of the Son of God, and the effect that God’s children become like Him? Or is the cause God’s children becoming like Him, and the effect, the appearance of the Son? Could it be, to employ another aged axiom, that is not a case of either/or, but of both/and?