You Are Beautiful, Radiant Inspirations!

Copyright 2018 Cindy Costello. All rights reserved.[/caption] Time for a gentle reminder, one we all need to hear from time to time. You are beautiful, radiant inspirations! (Pause here and take in that truth). Inspire ( in Latin inspirer) means “to breathe into, to infuse life.” This necessitates a posture of receiving -- of allowing ourselves to be breathed into -- in other words, to be open to life. This call to be mom, (spiritual and biological), a wife, and an educator, writer, (insert your call from God here) is God's breath of life-gift to us. How we live it out is our gift to Him. So we can be inspired by taking deep breaths along the journey into the very Presence of God who is All Radiant Beauty. There we will come to know our own beauty as a reflection of His Divine Beauty, and will live out our vocations as a gift back to Him. Philosophers call the beautiful that which has unity, harmony, proportion, wholeness and radiance. Plato writes: “The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful.” Radiance of the inner being is the chief element in the beautiful. Don’t we all want to be radiant? Don't we all want Beauty to find refuge within us?

“Look to him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame.” (Psalm 34)

Our whole lives is a journey toward Heaven; our whole lives are a journey into the Beautiful, Good God. We can spend time with Him now coming to understand His Divine Glory Beauty, and finding our own beauty there. Then we can be inspired to radiate that same beauty out toward others. What makes us sometimes afraid to face the Beautiful God?

“And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3) “Then you hid your face, and I was put to confusion” (Psalm 30)

God knows all of our sufferings and every one of our wounds. He no longer wants us to be put to confusion, or to seek other lesser gods or forms of beauty. So that’s where we are wounded, where our recognition of our dignity and worth is marred. We experience shame, guilt, and we are tempted to believe we will just never measure up. So facing Beauty, means getting before God in prayer, in sacrament (Eucharist and Confession), adoration, and with Mary as she walks with us through her Son’s life, death and resurrection in the rosary.

“Perfect Love (God) casts out all fear.” (1 John 4:18)

The result of facing Beauty is that the Truth is restored about how beautiful we are.

“The Lord intends us to know a new heart, a clean heart and a fleshy heart in place of a broken heart, a wounded heart and a hardened heart. This is the Lord’s work and in His time we do know it…. In a moment of grace there seems to be healing…a crumbling of the hardened stony heart or there is a washing clean and anew wholeness to the wounded heart or there is a replacement of the broken heart with the Lord’s (Sacred) Heart.” Fr. Michael Scanlon

This is our true desire. To be loved and known in and through every aspect of being, our faults and sufferings, our triumphs and our joys and to be filled with the love of God, filled to overflowing. It is a lifelong journey and there are many snares along the way and we will fall many times. But God is always faithful and he is always desiring us to give him everything, including our falls. Fall into His arms-face and embrace God's Beauty. Then you will know your own! Breathing in the Beauty of God leads to a radiant inner being! Radiance of our inner being infuses life into the world! You are beautiful! You are radiant! You inspire the world! Thank you for your gift!