Contemplating We are Imago Dei

Lord of all that is seen and unseen, You who knelt in garden dirt to shape the first human being with Your own hands — remind me today what that means.

When I pass the woman collecting cans at dawn before anyone else is awake, she carries Your image. When the man in the memory care unit no longer remembers his own name, he has not lost Yours — for You have written it into the very architecture of his soul. 1 Peter 5:3 tells shepherds not to lord authority over the flock, but to lead by example — and You, the Great Shepherd, led by washing feet, by touching lepers, by stopping for children everyone else waved away.

The Latin fathers called it Imago Dei — the image of God — and the Catholic tradition has always insisted this dignity is not earned but received, not partial but complete, present in the infant before her first breath and the prisoner after his worst day.

So transform my seeing, Lord. Give me what St. Ignatius called "eyes of the heart" — the ability to recognize Your fingerprints on every person I encounter today. Not just the ones who are easy to love, but the coworker who exhausts my patience, the stranger whose politics offend me, the neighbor I have been avoiding for months.