Column: We Shall Be Like Him

April 29, 2024

by Father Connor McGinnis

“For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (CCC 460). Here the Catechism references a comment made by St. Athanasius, one of the Church Fathers and great champion of the truth of the divinity of Christ. It’s a curious statement. Difficult as the mystery might be, we tend to recognize the idea that God became man. We call it “The Incarnation.” We celebrate this mystery at Christmas (in Jesus’ Nativity) and the Annunciation (in His conception). The very notion that “we might become God” is much more foreign to us. But it shouldn’t be, and the second reading from St. John’s first epistle actually makes reference to this great mystery:

Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Why is it important that St. John mention that “we shall see him as he is”? The reason is that if anyone saw God in His glory, he would be struck dead. Indeed, those who were with Moses couldn’t even bear the residual glory to God that clung to Moses after He had met God on Mount Sinai. A mere human being simply cannot stand before God. So it would seem to follow, then, that for us to stand before God in Heaven, we would have to be more than mere human beings. What would have to take place, in fact, is what has been called in the tradition deification or divinization. We must come to share in God’s very nature, in His divinity.

This might seems like a lofty or difficult concept, and in some sense it is. Boiled down, it really comes down to these two basic truths:

Human beings, in themselves, cannot be with God in Heaven, and
But God, in His generosity, has offered us the gift of being elevated beyond a merely human nature so that we can overcome this problem.

It is specifically due to Christ’s ministry to us in His life, death, and Resurrection that we are able to partake of this gift and share in His divine life. In this all-too-Christian paradox, Jesus lowered Himself so that we could be elevated. He was brought down so that we could be raised up. He became man that, we might become God. Now, we are like God to the extent we share in His divinity. We do not own this gift ourselves in the way that the Persons of the Trinity do. All the same, however, we are given the gift of sharing in Jesus’s divine life. It is this we have to look forward to, then, while living the Christian life here on earth, and living it fully with God in Heaven.