In this continuing article I have tried to suggest that the call to holiness is truly a call to personal transformation. If you have been following this article, I am sure that you have probably sensed that I have been wrestling with ways to encourage my readers how to accomplish this, since it seems that personal change is difficult. As I have reread some of my writings, it has dawned on me that what I have been trying to suggest is that we raise certain revealed truths to our consciousness. It is my belief that we truly become conscious about what God has revealed to us about humanity, that we will be much more eager to change ourselves.

One of the most profound revelations made to us by God, I believe, is that we have been created in His image, that is in His image as revealed to us in the Person of Jesus. St. Paul, in the first chapter of the Letter to the Colossians, writes this about Jesus: He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in Him all things were created … He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

So perhaps one of the first things we can do in order to respond to God’s call to holiness is to recognize, believe and really understand that we are created in the image of Jesus.

This means that we are called to grow in our likeness of Him, making His way of living, our way of living; making His way of thinking, our way of thinking; and making His way of worshiping God, our way of worshiping God. Like Jesus, we must first want to do all that Our ABBA wants us to do, namely make His Kingdom real right now. Of course this is why, I think, many want to think of Jesus as more God than man. If He is more God than man, then we can’t possibly imitate Him and grow in His likeness. Our faith tells us that He is fully God and FULLY MAN. Therefore we have the power to imitate Him.

Jesus CHOSE to be the man that He was while here on earth. He wasn’t forced to be who He was. Neither are we! We can choose to be like Him. We have been called to be like Him!