The mirror is an object full of symbolism, because it allows human beings to fulfill one of their greatest inner desires: to know themselves, to see themselves in detail, to examine themselves and discover things about themselves that would otherwise be impossible to discover. to perceive. It’s no wonder there are so many stories telling about the special relationship between people and mirrors. They all reveal, in some way, a little about us.
Narcissus saw his own image reflected in the water of the lake and fell in love with her, because he was a very beautiful young man. How many times have we fallen into this trap! We become so enchanted by our own reflection that we only see beauty, and we become unable to recognize our miseries. Narcissus was proud, vain, arrogant, but he didn’t know it, because he was focused on looking only at what was positive – the beauty of his features.
His story is told in another way by Oscar Wilde, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a young man who was so in love with the portrait painted by a friend that he was filled with imagining that one day he would grow old, but the painting would remain beautiful. His greatest fear – and what led him to ruin – was seeing his own miseries. It doesn’t seem very different from us, who are often ashamed to seek confession, due to the humiliation that it represents to expose our vileness and indignity.
Beware of false mirrors
A step further in this distorted form of self-knowledge is the magic mirror of Snow White’s evil queen, a magnum opus of . Often, not only do we convince ourselves of our virtues, our qualities, but it bothers us to imagine that someone could be better than us. Does so-and-so suffer? I suffer much more! Does someone show compassion in the face of a situation? That makes me angry, because I can’t be equal.
There are many other false mirrors, liars like the ones I mentioned, but they would not fit into this text.
There is one true mirror, which never fails, which reveals to us who we are, but which we do not want to look at: the .
To the magic mirror we say: “Mirror, my mirror, is there anyone more beautiful than me?” Before the Cross, we exclaim, with Saint Paul: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save those, of whom I am the worst”.
The cross is the example
The portrait of Dorian Gray became disfigured, horrendous, because he took on the filth and misery of that young man so that he could continue doing all kinds of evil while maintaining his beautiful and pure appearance. On the Cross, Christ appears disfigured, destroyed, hateful to human eyes because he took on our miseries and sins to save us, so that the old man that lives within us could be overcome and give way to the clean, pure, beautiful and spotless man.
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Contemplating his reflection in the lake, Narcissus fell in love with himself and lost himself in vanity, in and arrogance. Contemplating the tree of the Cross, we are led to sing, with Saint Therese of the Child Jesus:
“I claim suffering for myself.
My love, my desires are from the cross…
To help save just one soul,
I would like to die a thousand times!…”
Turn your eyes to the mirror of the cross
How thirsty we are to know who we are, to discover our abilities, “unlock our potential”, “change our mindset”! First of all, however, we must seek to find God, who is in us, because we came from him and we find ourselves in him. All self-knowledge without God will lead us into some trap: either we will be imprisoned by vanity, like Narcissus, or by envy, like the Evil Queen, or we will be completely taken over by perversity, like Dorian Gray.
The mirror of the Cross is challenging, because its reflection shows us a crucified Jesus, humble, meek, suffering…
The mirror of the Cross does not lie to us. Yes, through him we see our miseries, our unworthiness, but the first thing we see is God crushed and humiliated out of love for us.
The mirror of the Cross is the best treatment and liberation from every yoke that oppresses us.
The mirror of the Cross is God’s great declaration of love for each one of us.
Through the mirror of the Cross, God tells us:
“Soul, you will seek yourself in Me.
And you will seek Me in you.”