The Beekeeper’s Portrait
Updated: Sep 7
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.”1 Corinthians 13:12
Ruth brought a worn concrete portrait of her father, David. He had been a beekeeper and a curate. He had died suddenly, only months before. She was newly pregnant. She wanted her child, one day, to see the face of the grandfather who would never hold him.
The stone had stood outside in rain and snow for years. The features were fading.
The conservator worked slowly. She was more used to paintings than to concrete. When the cloth was lifted, Ruth’s eyes filled. “It’s exactly how I remember it,” she said. “Dare I say it — better. His moustache looks great.”
Some repairs do not invent a new past. They only bring a face back clearly enough for love to keep looking at it, while the family learns how to live without the person who wore that face.
Jesus treated faces with that kind of care. He looked at people whom others had stopped seeing. He restored what was damaged. He did not wait until someone was already whole. After he rose from the dead, his friends knew him again. The Christian hope is that this is not only a memory. One day we shall see one another clearly. The dead are not lost to God. In the resurrection, the face we loved will not be only a photograph or a piece of stone. It will be a living person.
At Mass we remember the dead by name. We place them before God, who does not forget a face. We also receive Christ, who comes close to us now, while the waiting is still unfinished.
The portrait was given back so that love could recognise it again. God is at work in the same quiet way. He restores what rain and time have worn. And in the end he will not only return a likeness. He will return the person.