DEACON TOM ANTHONY

Sunday, October 13, 2013





God 's Grace is a beautiful and wonderful thing. It is the working and presence of his infinite love for us. We must all remember that he loves us and longs to express that love continuously. Unfortunately, the very creation that he brought into existence for us has the capability to prevent that love from being revealed. There are so many obstructions between us and God. These have been erected by us and our own actions over long periods of time and have been reenforced by Satan. Tearing down these walls can prove to be difficult; a dauntless task that, at times, can appear to produce little or no results in the beginning. Our own impatience adds to these difficulties and we become easily distracted by things that may appear to offer positive development. This in itself is another barrier that we must overcome. We are prevented from experiencing God in our lives because the time we spent ignoring him greatly outweighs the time we have spent with him so we can actually miss his presence. Even when it is plainly obvious that he is with us, we can pass right by him. Society has conditioned us to believe that we as human beings are above and beyond everything else here on this earth. We have convinced ourselves that we are gods and have forgotten that, in fact, we are God's children and are answerable to him.

To know God is to love God. John, in his first letter, tells us that love is from God and is brought to perfection through him. That is why the Greatest Commandment in centered around love: love of God and the love of our neighbor. So, to recognize that love we must first make it the most important thing in our lives. We must treat everyone we interact with with love and kindness. We must empty ourselves of all of our selfish desires and put ourselves last. That is our Christian Duty. We need to love and express that love through acts of charity and kindness. There is an immediate feeling of goodness that overcomes us when we do good. This is no coincidence. We were created for love and when we act out that love we are bringing ourselves closer to God who is the perfect love.

God has and always will help us on our journey of faith. I truly feel that all of us can reflect over our past and remember a time vividly when God interceded in our lives in some way either to destroy a barrier or help us in some way. Because of our fallen nature, we may have been thankful for a moment but then the moment passed and we continued onward in our sinful ways. He was calling out to us, comforting us, yet we were then overcome by distractions when the moment faded. Yes, we may have acknowledged God for the moment but we then squandered the moment selfishly like 9 of the ten lepers who were healed and never returned to thank Jesus. Our relationship with God is two-fold: we need to embrace these moments and use these moments to lift ourselves up to greater heights. If we do not, it can become a wasted opportunity.

We always like being stimulated. Unfortunately, physical our minds are focused more on physical stimulation than spiritual stimulation. We have become immersed in the physical dimensions of our existence and have ignored the spiritual. When we experience a spiritual moment we do enjoy it immensely, yet we may not challenge ourselves enough to embrace it and use it as an opportunity to continue the experiences because we do not know enough about it to use it to our advantage; it is too foreign to us. We are more accustomed to physical pleasures and pursue them more easily because we are very learned in these areas. Unfortunately, physical pleasures are fleeting so we train ourselves to chase after them. Spiritual pleasures can last forever because they unite us to God. If we worked towards these spiritual pleasures with as much effort as we do with physical pleasures, we would all be closer to God and his love.

Our journey of faith must be centered around getting closer to God. To do this correctly, we must unite our physical presence and life with that of our spiritual life. Our spirituality must influence our physical actions. A big mistake is to keep the two separate. Our physical life needs to be a reaction to our spirituality if we are to be truly happy and complete. Spirituality needs to become more important than the physical life. This is what God intended and what we failed to do with the exercise of our free will. We rebelled against perfection and still do continuously. It is a struggle between the flesh and the spirit. We need to stop fighting with ourselves and realize that, because of the fighting, we are only hurting ourselves.

Recognize that our God is with us. Recognize that our God loves us. Once we do this we can then embrace him and experience him in his greatness.

Deacon Tom

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