But be as perfect as you are perfect your heavenly Father (Matt. 5:48)

To imitate God?
Plato established the principle of our moral life – to imitate God according to our means. Because God is the idea of ​​supreme goodness and beauty; he is the ideal of perfection for man, especially in spiritual matters and in the effort to free oneself from bodily passions. Thus
the set ideal is sublime. But he can achieve it anyone living on earth? Plato believed this and claimed that we are an “image of God” naturally directed to your prototype. These are beautiful words, though, in a particular life, we ​​realize how immense distance separates creatures from their Creator. However, even the Holy Scriptures teach us that we are created “To the image of God and according to him about the form” (cf. Gen 1,26-27). The Church Fathers turned their attention to the biblical expression “according to its form” to overcome the difficulty of immense distance. This suggests the idea that.

God would first create an image of His infinite perfection and then, later, man “according to” the original embodiment. If we ask who is the true perfect form, the Scriptures correspond clearly: Christ, who “was like God in the way of being” (cf. Ep 2: 6), “God’s image “(cf. 2 Cor 4: 4). And through Christ, God descends to earth, and so, imitating Christ, we can gradually improve his resemblance to the Father in heaven. Through Christ, we become sons, and sonship involves real kinship. After all, the face of the saints often and visibly radiated the glory of God, as the face of Moses became radiant, when he descended from the holy mountain of Sinai after an interview with God (cf. Ex 34:29).
King Boles lav of Poland (+ 1173) carried with him everywhere a portrait of his Father made of gold. In moments no doubt how he should decide, he looked intently at this portrait and said, “I will never do anything it wouldn’t be worth your name. “A Christian wears a picture of his heavenly Father in all his person. His decisions must, therefore, correspond to this fact.