Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
The plan of God, the plan of God is that we become more and more conformed to his son, Jesus Christ.
We are made in the image and likeness of God and by means of the transforming and powerful presence of Christ and his grace, we are meant to be formed more and more to his likeness, more and more conformed to Jesus Christ, each in a bit of a different way, right?
We see this in the lives of the saints, the great variety of saints.
And so that is the saints became the persons whom God created them to be.
Now the plan of Satan is the exact opposite to destroy the image and likeness of God.
And by alluring the soul, of course, not with grace, but with temptations and drawing the human will to commit sin and to depart from the plan and will of God.
This will bring deformity to the soul and that soul will become less and less in the image and likeness of God.
Now I want to affirm that this can actually be perceived by the soul in prayerful and sincere reflection.
So we have St. Mary Magdalene prior to her conversion.
She is possessed by seven demons.
There are some Fathers of the Church who interpret that as having committed sins against each of the seven capital sins.
So she's possessed by seven demons and deformed, right?
She is not the person whom God created her to be.
And I want to say that if she entered into herself in prayerful reflection, and maybe it doesn't even take a whole lot of reflection, she would probably have come to the conclusion, you know what?
I'm not myself.
This doesn't feel right.
There's something amiss.
I'm sure that would have been her experience.
But under the influence of the transforming power and presence of Christ, she has changed, right?
The demons are cast out.
She begins to cooperate with the grace of Christ, and she becomes more and more the person, the saint, whom God created her to be.
We just concluded the Eucharistic Congress yesterday that was so beautiful, those days with all of our brothers and sisters in the faith, and in spending time in Christ’s Eucharistic presence, we can experience we're becoming more and more ourselves, more and more the persons, the saints that God has created us to be.
So like St. Mary Magdalene in today’s gospel, eagerly seeking out the Lord, where is he?
I can’t find him.
She’s weeping because of that.
When she does discover Christ, that’s her joy.
That’s her peace.
So it makes her more and more herself, so we can find the same thing in the presence of our Eucharistic Lord.
He will transform us by his power and by his grace to become more and more ourselves, and we can perceive this as well as we are changed day to day, becoming the saints he has created us to be.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.