Even now you have a partial likeness, because you know partially. ‘With face unveiled’ you are ‘already contemplating my glory’, but yet you are still ‘being transformed from one degree of glory to another’. While you are being transformed, you do not yet possess wholly. To be transformed is to make progress, but not yet to have been made perfect.
Your perfection, however, is not yet yours, but already my eyes see it; with me you already are such as you will be, 0 bride. Already you have been written in the book of life and I have your portrait in my hands. Your face is before me always; it shines bright before me, though in you at present it is obscured. Already I have found the drachma of my image in you, but it is still coated with rust and its beauty is hidden. Faith already glows on your cheeks and suffuses them with the color of life, but the object of faith is in hiding.
Gilbert of Hoyland
