God's Love Is The Best Beauty Treatment

“Do you think it’s wrong to have a facelift?” a girlfriend asked as we sat on the beach house sofa in our pajamas, sipping coffee and looking out the window at the boats in the harbor. We were on retreat with a wonderful band of women, and as it frequently happens with women, the subject turned to beauty.

“I had the same conversation with my sister just last week,” I replied. “I’ll tell you what I told her. I don’t think it’s ‘wrong’ to have a facelift, but my desire is to be so full of God’s love that it shines through my face so I don’t NEED a facelift,” I continued.

Our culture’s preoccupation with physical beauty is but one sign that we’re living from the outside in, instead of from the inside out. But as Christians, we’re meant to live from the inside out, letting the love of Christ inhabit us so fully that it radiates within us and shows up on our faces as “glory.”

Think about Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. She was not “beautiful” by the world’s standards. But she was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. Why? She was overflowing with the love of God and it showed on her face.   Such beauty is not exclusive to women.

I often think of Moses, who enjoyed such personal intimacy with God that he spoke with God “face to face” (Ex. 33:11). Moses’ face became so radiant when he conversed with the Lord that he had to veil his face to come into the presence of the Israelites. That manifestation of glory foreshadowed the glory of Christ, who is the very “imprint” of God’s being, and who reveals to us in flesh and blood the face of God (Hebrews 1:3-4). If we want to see God, we are to look at Christ. And if we want to look like God, we are to become like Christ. How? St. Augustine gave us the secret: we become what we contemplate.

We contemplate Christ by spending time with Him in prayer, and by meditating on His Word and His presence. We contemplate Christ by making Him our best friend and top priority in life, and by learning all we can about who He is. We contemplate Christ by serving others, as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta demonstrated so wonderfully through her life’s work, wherein she saw the face of Christ in the “poorest of the poor.”

When we contemplate Christ, we become Christ-like, and we take on His beautiful countenance. Nowhere have I seen this truth manifested more evidently than on the faces of the recovering drug addicts of Communita Cenacolo, a lay Catholic Community that ministers to those in bondage to addiction. The residents of the Community usually arrive there looking beat up, strung out, and exhausted. And indeed they are. Their faces bear witness to the hell they’ve lived in the grip of drugs, which has become their main preoccupation.

I have pictures of my own son the day he arrived at Cenacolo, wearing black circles under his eyes and an almost palpable shadow of darkness on his face. His face looked markedly different when I saw him months later, not because he was being “rehabbed,” but because he was being “restored.” He was returning to the truth that he is a beloved child of God—a child in whom God delights—in large part by spending hours a day before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He was becoming what he meditated upon, and his face told the tale. Over the years, I’ve heard many parents echo the same amazement when they see their children’s faces for the first time after they enter the Community, because the change in their faces is nothing short of remarkable.

Do you want to be beautiful? Unveil your face and gaze upon the face of the Lord, that He may transform you from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:13). His love is a beauty treatment that’s not only free—it has lasting benefits.

Look to Him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame.   Psalm 34:6

Living Joy in a Culture of Death

I am delighted to post my first guest blog by my daughter, singer-songwriter Kara Klein. Kara will be posting here occasionally, when she's not on the road singing and ministering to the youth.   Enjoy!

“Good morning Holy Spirit! Good morning my life!” In Communita Cenacolo, a lay Catholic community in which I spent a year of my life, over 2,000 members in 65 houses around the world wake up every morning to these words.

Mother Elvira Petrozzi, a fiery, fearless, faith-filled nun, started this community 30 years ago when she began taking in addicts off the streets and bringing them to a dilapidated house in northern Italy. There she taught them to pray, depend on God’s Providence, and rebuild their lives. But more than anything else, in these three decades, amidst a culture death, this courageous nun has spread like wildfire to thousands of young people the joy of living.

“Life is a gift from God, born from His heart, which is love. No one can enter into the heart of our life for us. It is a personal journey,” she says. In the last five years of my journey with this community I have watched many people—young and old, children and parents—walk from darkness into light and rediscover the joy of living. Not because life suddenly went the way they wanted it to go, or they discovered some magical secret, but because they encountered Someone: Jesus Christ, who wants to set our hearts free.

The culture of death in which we live goes far beyond abortion, murder and war: at its heart is a generation that does want to live their own lives. And if we do not believe that our lives are truly worth living, how can we fight for the lives of those around us?

As I recently led worship for Cenacolo’s annual Festival of Life in St. Augustine, FL, a priest from Italy spoke of Mother Elvira. Even now, in her 80s, unable to talk or do much of anything, she is still smiling, in love with Jesus and those around her, and in love with her life. Life, in her eyes, is worth living until the day God takes her home, even if it means suffering, for she knows that the cross is the way to the resurrection.

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but think of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman with terminal brain cancer, who recently took her own life so she could avoid suffering and “die with dignity.” When did suffering become undignified?

With the eyes of faith, suffering is so very precious, for it becomes the sacred space that God uses to work miracles in our lives, pour out His grace, and show us His goodness and mercy. As Mother Teresa says, “God cannot fill what is full.”

This community has changed my heart in so many ways, but perhaps more than anything, it has invited me to embrace the cross, as well as embrace the fullness of life, hand in hand. How do we do this? Through love. Love hurts, love sacrifices, but love fills our hearts with joy! May we become a generation unafraid to love, unafraid of the cross, unafraid of the beautiful resurrection to which it leads, and unafraid to live our own lives to the full.

Kara Klein is a six time award-winning Catholic recording artist, worship leader and inspirational speaker, who has released five original albums and appeared on four international television programs. For the past ten years Kara has traveled the globe, calling people of all ages to embrace, fall in love with and rediscover the joy of life in Christ, and to believe that life is a glorious gift from God that is truly worth living. For more information on her ministry, please visit her website, www.karaklein.com.

Thelma and Louise With Jesus

On the road again…

“Can you please help me bring my son to Communita Cenacolo?” I asked my friend, Mary Lou McCall, in desperation four and a half years ago. That request—and her unhesitating “yes”—took us on a road trip 600 miles away to St. Augustine, Florida, where we delivered my then-nineteen-year-old son, Christian, to a Catholic community founded to heal those in the grips of addiction.

That was the beginning of an amazing journey, wherein Mary Lou and I have driven thousands of miles together to over a dozen Community retreats, jokingly naming our selves “Thelma and Louise With Jesus” somewhere along the way. We hit the road one more time this past weekend to head to St. Augustine for the Cenacolo Fall Festival, where once again, we saw life, hope and profound transformation on the faces of formerly hopeless addicts and their families who, by God’s grace and love, have taken hold of their identities as beloved children of God.

With “Thelma and Louise” on my mind these past few years, I decided to watch the movie again recently. I was struck by the darkness of the story, and by the depth of injustice and despair that plagues the movie’s two heroines until the very end. Faced with the absurdity of their situation, Thelma and Louise opt to kill themselves, driving their Ford Thunderbird convertible off a cliff into the Grand Canyon.

Thanks be to God, that’s not the way our story went. Though Mary Lou and I both encountered darkness and even despair in our circumstances, we never considered going anywhere but in the direction of Jesus. After all, where else could we go? We believe and are convinced that He is the Holy One, and that He alone has the words of eternal life.

God, in His extreme mercy, met our belief with miracles. He has outdone Himself in generosity by granting us many incredible answers to prayer, starting with the way that Mary Lou and I reconnected in 2008 after losing contact for several years.

That reconnection happened during a dim time in my life, when I begged God to send me a friend. I didn’t just ask God for any friend, but specifically prayed for a friend who understood the devastation of addiction. Within twenty-four hours of that plea, Mary Lou McCall had left me both a voicemail and e-mail. She informed me that her son, Mackie, had recently met Christian at a rehab center, and that both of her oldest sons were struggling with addictions. She also shared that she, too, was in recovery. “Here’s my phone number,” she wrote. “I’m here if you need anything.” Blown away by the immediate answer to prayer, I called her that day. We’ve been joined at the heart ever since on this journey with our sons, as well as in the unfolding of own personal healings along the way.

It is difficult to articulate what God has done for us, but I pondered that reality with deep gratitude this weekend during the family retreat. Mary Lou and I sat together through talks, liturgies, praise and worship, dances, testimonials and plays, witnessing the transfiguration of not only poor, addicted souls, but their extended families as well. We heard story after story of people who showed up at Community just like we did—with their families torn asunder and their hope destroyed by the bondage of sin and addiction. And we saw in living color the power of the Resurrection, especially on the faces of the young men and women who have found not only deliverance from death, but true joy in discovering the love of God and the friendship of their brothers and sisters in Community.

Mary Lou’s eldest son Johnny entered Cenacolo in June of 2009 at “Our Lady of Hope” in Florida, one of sixty-five Community houses around the world. Exactly one year later in June 2010, Christian entered the same house. It was there that he and Johnny met for the first time, and there that they forged a deep bond of friendship. Though Johnny was transferred to a house in Italy five months after Christian’s arrival in Florida, Christian moved to Italy shortly thereafter. As God would have it, the two young men landed in the same house again, then slept side by side in adjacent beds for the next year. That experience made them closest of brothers.

The whole crew in Italy with Mother Elvira, Founder of Communita Cenacolo

Mary Lou and I just smiled and shook our heads. “Who but God could have possibly worked out our stories with such personal attention to detail?” we asked. Meanwhile, we kept driving twice a year to the retreats.

One year ago, Johnnie became a missionary in Liberia, where he lives in a Community-run orphanage that cares for twenty abandoned children. Neither the difficulty of the work nor the Ebola crisis has sent him packing, because he has learned the importance of sacrifice and keeping his commitments, no matter what the cost. Christian exited Community two months ago, moving to Wyoming to work on a youth ranch for troubled, addicted teenagers. “I know the work will be hard and they can’t pay much,” Christian said before he left. “But I want to give back for what I received in Community.” And off he went.

Our sons don’t want to be considered heroes and they don’t want any medals. They are struggling young men who found new life, and who want to give back to others what they have received gratuitously from God: faith, hope and love. Those are virtues that Thelma and Louise never quite got. Yet they are precisely the inherent qualities that give life meaning and call us to live with a purpose that is beyond ourselves—a purpose that drives us toward life, not head on into the valley of death.

As for Mary Lou and me, instead of letting the men in our lives drive us over the edge like the movie's protagonists, we presented our sons to "the man," Jesus.  He is the true man, the God-man, who has conquered sin and death and who alone can make all things new.