Deacon Tom Anthony

We are men and women of faith. We are taught to surrender everything to God's will and take comfort and solace that he will guide us through every trial and tribulation. We will be protected as a father protects his children. We will be loved as a mother loves. This can be a challenge at times. Anxiety always accompanies crisis and it is very difficult to just dismiss it from our lives. To make matters worse, there are many ways available to make stress and pain fade away for the moment while not addressing the problems at hand. Comfort can be found through many unhealthy sources such as alcohol, drugs, and the other dark allures of society. In the end, these are tools of Satan just as anxiety is. There is a reason that the Holy Mass includes a plea to God to remove all of our anxieties and to allow us to surrender to his will.

Through Sacred Scripture God demonstrates that nothing is beyond his power. Elijah the Prophet brought a widow's son back from the dead while Christ did the same many times in his ministry. This displays that God feels our misery and hears our daily pleas. It also demonstrates that nothing, even death, is beyond the power of God. Miracles happen every day in our lives but because of our fallen nature we tend to minimize them and ignore them. We will try to reason with ourselves and justify a miracle as something that was purely natural. We have been convinced through the workings of society and Satan that there is a scientific explanation for everything. Even though we live our faith every day we still have that capability to abandon it very quickly in the face of the greatest display of God's power.

It is very ironic. Jesus tells us repeatedly to have faith. We try to have faith. We are a prayerful people. Yet, when our prayers are answered we then try to rationalize an explanation that does not include God. We are always trying to remove God from the equation. Then, after God is removed, we claim that our prayers are never answered. That is why faith is so important: we are absolutely incapable of witnessing God's majesty without doubting him completely. This has always been a challenge to us and always will be. The only thing we can do is strengthen ourselves spiritually to minimize the impact that this could have on our lives. God must remain central and we must embrace him to not only feel his presence but to acknowledge that he is at work in his creation constantly. He does not come and go. He is everywhere. Once we embrace this fact, we can overcome anything.

Jesus emphasized the importance of faith through his words to Thomas: “Blessed are those who have not seen and believed.” This was not an insult to Thomas. Jesus' disciples scattered and hid after his crucifixion. They were afraid for their own lives and thought that he was gone forever. It was through the resurrection that their faith was restored. After all that they had seen and heard, they remained weak and untrustworthy. We all can relate to this same feeling. We profess our faith, pray to God, and live in community together. Our faith is central to our lives. We love our God. This is all true yet we can abandon everything so readily. At the same time we have hope. The greatest Apostles had the same doubts but they were then raised to the highest of heights. They all were sinners and were challenged in much the same way that we are. We can find strength through their example. That is why their testimony is so important to us as is the testimony of all of those who came before us and are now adjoined in the Communion of the Saints. They strengthen us and pray for us still.

When we are weak and facing persecution, we are being forged as “gold in the furnace.” The more obstacles we face the stronger we will become just as long as we don't forget who are creator is. Every person has the ability to become a witness to Jesus Christ. The way to do this is to keep him central in all of our thoughts, actions, and deeds. Do every with Christ in mind. Never forget him. He has never forgotten about us.

Deacon Tom