It is usually no difficult matter to trace a family resemblance between a son and a father. There is the same facial expression, the same slight peculiarity in speech, or a similarity of outlook on life, by which we easily detect the close relationship of one to the other.
Man is God's image most of all because divine grace gives him a participation in divine life. He is the son of God by adoption. Jesus Christ, his Elder Brother, is Son of God by nature. Man, by grace, is "coopted" into God's family and made to sit at God's table and enjoy the intimate friendship of his heavenly Father. Unlike human adoption, divine adoption does not merely regard the adopted son as belonging to the family; it actually effects this by infusing grace into the soul. "As many as received Him He gave them the power to become the sons of God."
So it ought to be easy for the world I live in to detect the family resemblance between God and myself. That is a rather startling proposition, but it is a logical conclusion from all Our Lord has been explaining in this prayer of mine. We are not Catholics merely when we are on our knees, merely when we are receiving the Sacraments or assisting at Mass. We are Catholics seven days a week and twentyfour hours a day, and one of the objects of this meditation (and indeed of this whole book of meditations) is to show how that noble ideal can filter into our daily lives. We have something which our nonCatholic neighbor has not. It is a poor return to God if we merely practice the essential duties of our religion and after that live exactly the same lives as our pagan friends and acquaintances.
We are different; we have the truth and we are certain of it.
It should surely shine forth in our daily lives.
We are idealists. We recognize indeed that we are a fallen race, that our nature is grievously wounded by sin. But it has been healed too; and it can still attain to that holiness of life which Our Lord urges upon it and eagerly helps us to achieve. We have enthusiasm for our Faith, but it is not the emotionalism of the revivalist. It is a reasoned enthusiasm, for, before it sets the heart beating wildly, it has first flooded the intellect with light.
If ten thousand men sit in the stadium and the electric light fuses, there is complete darkness. But if every one of those ten thousand produced a tiny spark of light, even the flicker of a match, the whole stadium would be illuminated. If every Catholic layman lived his Faith, he would contribute his spark to the lighting up of a dark world. He would help effectively to dispel the darkness and straighten out the tangle and bring order out of chaos, because he would know that the fundamental question to tackle is "What is man, and what is man for?"