You ask with great urgency for the renewal of your face and outward beauty, but consider what beauty it is that God truly desires. The King does not desire the beauty of the flesh, which fades like the grass, but the beauty of the soul, which is clothed in grace and holiness. For the Psalmist says, "So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty," but this is the beauty that comes from forgetting the sins of your father's house, from turning away from the vanity that consumes so many, and from adorning the inner person with righteousness. Do you not know that God has already bestowed upon you a far greater restoration?
He takes a soul wasted by the leprosy of sin, disfigured by age and poverty and famine of the Spirit, and transforms it into a graceful youth, radiating a brightness that outshines the sun. This is the beauty He freely gives, the beauty that makes the angels marvel and the King of heaven delight. Yet you, like one coming into church with a wandering eye, gazing at the outward bloom of flesh, risk drawing upon yourself not renewal but the smoke that provokes God's long-suffering. For the filth that truly defiles is not a wrinkle on the skin, but the filth of the mouth and heart: evil speaking, blasphemy, lust, and anxious fear that reveals a trust not firmly fixed on Him.
Wash yourself with the water of virtues, not with futile tears over a fading body. If you hold fast your confidence and rejoicing in the hope of Christ firm to the end, then you are the house of God, arrayed in a beauty that never ages, never withers, never disfigures under any disease or earthly care. The face you are so eager to restore today will in twenty years, or less, be taken by time; but the beauty of the soul, if you cultivate it, blooms forever in the nuptial chamber undefiled. Did Christ not take the Church when she was black as darkness, foolish, disobedient, utterly deformed, and yet He gave Himself up for her, washing her and presenting her spotless?
He did not abhor her for her deformity. How much more will He not restore you, but restore you not by granting a vain and fleeting outer beauty, but by granting you to say with a pure heart and pure lips the words that breathe of heaven, partaking of the mystical table with cheerful confidence? Command your passions now, and you shall one day command the abyss of fire and enter the kingdom with great confidence. Set your desire, therefore, not on the things that are here below, which have no lasting charm, but on the things above, where Christ is.
Let your prayer be not for the skin that perishes, but for the grace that makes you an object of God's own love. Then your youth shall be renewed like the eagle's, your trust shall be abundant, and your face shall shine not with the luster that arouses wantonness, but with the brightness that reflects the glory of the Lord. This is the renewal I urge you to seek, and for this I join my prayer with yours: that you may so forget the desires of your former ignorance, and adorn the inner person, that the King may greatly desire your beauty, and you may pass into the spiritual chambers, world without end.