DEACON TOM ANTHONY

Sunday, January 18, 2015


Everybody can probably remember a time when we called to God for help and received no response. Instead there was a deep sense of loneliness coupled with emptiness. But it is within this silence where God is actually trying to talk to us. He is already there waiting for us to listen to him. Even though we feel that we are reaching out to him in desperation he has been calling us the whole time.

We are positioned perfectly within the universe and God is present everywhere. It is impossible to avoid him and not experience him in some way or another. The challenge is how we receive him. There is so many distractions in every day life that God's Word can easily become muted in some way or distorted to a point where our own thoughts and perceptions take the place of his. Instead of receiving his answer or enjoying his presence we are subject to our own distorted view of what we are looking for. We are then finding ourselves justifying our own solutions thinking they are God's divine word. This is where we are most vulnerable to misinterpretation. Our calamities become worse and our situation more dire than it was before.

Our relationship with God must be approached just like any other relationship in our lives. It takes a great amount of work to truly experience the fruits of what is being offered to us. The silence we abhor is really the place where we have to begin searching for what God is telling us. He does not often reveal himself in a grandiose manner but instead choose to envelop us in the gift of his presence and a state of being that transforms us spiritually so that we may fully align ourselves with him. Our physical and mental being will follow our spiritual if we just allow it. It is completely natural for us to resist this and we must be fully aware that this battle is linked directly with our Fallen Nature and it is something that only we can overcome with the Love of God

God approached Samuel with a whisper. A whisper by its definition is an intimate form of communication with the message intended for only a small group of people or more commonly for an individual. When it is used a very personal message is often involved. If someone is distracted or otherwise preoccupied that message can be lost. Through the relationships of God throughout Sacred Scripture intimate relationships are revealed to be
a preferred form of communication reaching its perfection with the New Covenant in the form of prayer. In reality we are not accustomed to this intimacy and the silence that it brings. Silence, which we perceive is a form of rejection is actually the first step in a deep personal relationship with God.
What did Jesus say about prayer? He said that we must go to into our inner room and shut the door. This is very important because it indicates that if we are to benefit with our relationship with our creator then we must experience him alone and in the silence that only our personal space can provide. We then must exercise our relationship and make it stronger through a rich and engaged prayer life enforced by continuous worship and praise it our creator. We cannot choose when to engage God. This puts us above him. He is already constantly with us. We have just ignored him so much that we cannot even acknowledge him when he is already here.

We as Christians know that Gos is with us. Now we must understand and feel what that actually means. To do that we must pray in silence and enjoy that silence without any distractions. We cannot get in our own way.

Deacon Tom Anthony





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