The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive

One of my theology teacher's favorite things to say is "the glory of God is man fully alive". This is a question that he loves to ask us. It really makes us think. He asks all of us what we think it means and we all have different answers. We sometimes spend entire classes answering questions that my teacher, Mr. Cole, asks us that relate to the ultimate question: "What does it mean to say that 'the glory of God is man fully alive'?" He has now asked us to put our opinion on the answer to the question down on paper for our final blog post. So, What DOES it mean to say that the glory of God is man fully alive? I am about to tell you what it means to me.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light." 
"Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."

I used these two quotes because I wanted to express how, even from the beginning, humans were special to God. He created us and gave us dominion over the other plants and animals of the earth. He told us "be fruitful and multiply," because he wanted Adam and Eve to fill the earth with his greatest creation. He even said that humans were "very good", not just "good" like the rest of his creations had been. God wants us to give glory to him by living a Christ-like life and being good stewards of the earth. We have to live the way that God intended for us in order to give him glory and praise. 

God created man in the image and likeness of Him which means that we have free will, capacity to love, and intellect. Because we have these things, each person makes his/her own decisions with what they do in life and they want to live their life. One of the consequences of this free will is that sometimes we make the wrong decision and make mistakes. With this being said, we all have something in common. We have to find our vocation or calling. Everyone's vocation is different but we are all called to give glory to God through whatever our vocation is. So, in a sense, we all have the same vocation, there are just different paths that we take to satisfy the ultimate calling - to give glory to God. Through this intellect, free will, and capacity to love, we are able to live to our full potential and be fully alive in God if we choose. We learn new things everyday about our calling, but we must remember the ultimate calling is to be with God in heaven, so we must live our lives fully alive in Christ, trying to give him praise with everything that we do. For me, this is what it means to say "the glory of God is man fully alive."

God's Greatest Attribute is His Mercy

This quote "God's Greatest Attribute is His Mercy" is another quote that my teacher, Mr Cole loves to say. He told us an interesting story earlier in the year about a teacher that he had in college that he learned this saying from. He said that there was a rumor that if you wrote "God's greatest attribute is His mercy" at the bottom of your test, he wouldn't fail you no matter how bad you did. That is something along the lines of what he told us, but he has brought this quote and started using it in our class in certain situation. I think this quote is very interesting because when you think about it, God has to forgive and have mercy on everybody because no body is perfectly sinless except for Jesus and Mary.

At the very beginning of time, in the first book of the Bible, we already see God's Mercy and forgiveness. Because of the free will we all sometimes make mistakes and do stuff we shouldn't do. We see these mistakes from the beginning of time when Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God told them that they could eat from any other tree except for that one but they disobeyed him. After Adam and Eve, we see more mistakes made throughout the Old Testament. The world becomes so filled with evil at one point that he selects Noah to build an arch and save his family and one of every type of animal, and God sends a flood that kills everybody and takes all the evil with it, but original sin still remained. We see God's mercy when he makes the ultimate sacrifice and sends his only begotten son down to earth to die for our sins. While on earth Christ establishes the Church, the Sacrament of Salvation and the Sacraments as a way for us to receive God's grace and his salvation. God forgives all of our sins that we make everyday, we just have to pray, repent, and ask for forgiveness. For me, that is why God's greatest attribute is His mercy.

The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive

In our Theology II class a frequent term used is "the glory of God is man fully alive," but what does this really mean.  That question is the question that Mr. Cole will not stop asking. At the beginning of the year, we answered this question and he asked us to answer it again. Here is my reflection on St Irenaeus's quote from about 185 AD. 

Well I think that we can all a agree that God created the world and he did it to express his love for us. God is a perfect being that did not need to create the world and can not gain anything by creating the world. Therefore, God did not create the world for his personal gain, but share his glory with the world.  God truly expressed his love for us by creating us.  So the Glory God is when he manifests himself and his goodness through creation.  God created us, human beings, to be in communion with him.  One problem, when Adam and Eve committed original sin, we fell out of communion with God and could no longer fulfill our one true task.  So God sent his only son to redeem us by sacrificing himself on the cross.  Again, this is God showing his everlasting and  generous love for us.

The next step we must take to understanding the glory of God is man full alive now that we know what the Glory of God is.  Man fully alive is a person doing what God would want us to do, making the morale Christian decision and helping others.  An easy way to do this is when you are presented with a difficult situation, think with your heart and not your head.  This will usually get you going on the right track and you will often make the right decision. God also created us to work, so we can glorify God through our work. In our respective jobs, we should work hard to do the best we can. Now that we have an understanding what man fully alive is, we can begin to piece the phrase together.  So if the glory of God is creation and man fully alive is someone a good morale decision, when we put them together it takes on a new meaning.  The glory of God is man fully alive means that when a Christian is acting as God wants him to, then he is showing the world the Glory of God through his actions and works.  I hope that this helps explain the confusing and unanswerable concept of "The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive."

Confirmation: The Laying on of Hands

Confirmation is the perfection of the graces given in Baptism. The sacrament gets it roots from the story of Pentecost where Christ sent the Holy Spirit to the Apostles giving them the courage to preach the Gospel. The Early Church called this sacrament the Laying of Hands because an Apostle would lay his hands on the newly baptized and confirm his baptism. Confirmation completes Baptism by bringing the the confirmand- the person receiving the Sacrament- fully into the Mystical Body of Christ and perfecting the graces that had been given in Baptism. The confirmand receives the same rush of the Holy Spirit that the Apostles experienced at Pentecost. Confirmation reaffirms the person's identity as an adopted child of God and strengthens the person's ability to proclaim the Gospel through words and deeds. Confirmation confirms one's baptism through the laying on of hands and anointing with Chrism.

Baptism: Initiation into the Church

The Sacrament of Baptism is one of the three Sacraments of Initiation by which a person becomes a full member of the Church. Baptism is a new birth in water and the Spirit by which we are cleansed of both Original Sin and actual sin. Baptism connects us to the resurrection of Christ and allows us to be saved. Jesus says that unless a person is born of water and Spirit he can not enter the Kingdom of God. He commands the Apostles to go and Baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit highlighting the importance of Baptism in Salvation. After we participate in Baptism, we become part of the Mystical Body of Christ and we become an adopted son or daughter of God. Although we are forgiven of Original Sin through Baptism, we retain the consequences of Original Sin such as death and the inclination to sin. Baptism opens the path and the ability to go to Heaven, but we still must live a Christ like life. Baptism initiates us into the Church and gives us the sanctifying grace needed to enter into the Kingdom of God.

The First Sin

Original Sin, the first sin, is a core part of Catholic Church teaching, and can only be understood through the creation story, along with some background on of Jesus Christ. In the beginning, Adam and Eve lived in a state of Original Justice and Holiness in communion with God. They were commanded not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, because it would kill them. When they disobeyed God and trusted the Devil's temptation, they losed communion with God and the advantages that came with being in communion with our creator. Before Original Sin, we were free from the burdens of sin like death. Adam and Eve's children would also not inherit the communion with God, and humans would be born in a state of lost grace. This Fall from communion is the direct effect of the Original Sin, which could only be atoned for by Jesus Christ. In order for us to be brought back into communion with God, we needed a human to repay the infinite debt that we owed to God. Only Christ who is fully divine yet fully human could redeem a sin committed by humans against God. 

Bum or Human

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AusCA28efa0&feature=youtu.be
In this blog post I would like to reflect on the video that I liked above. The video documents someone interviewing a homeless man. I am going to talk about our views of homeless people by the general public and then I want to talk about how we can help homeless people.
In this video, the homeless man gets very emotional and upset because he talks about how badly people treat him and how terrible some of the things people say to him are. We, as a general population, treat homeless people very badly because of stereotypes. Many people do not want to give homeless people money because they are afraid that they are going to go spend the money on drugs and alcohol and not actually use it to buy food and shelter. Some people also do not like to help homeless people because they think that they have become homeless because they are too lazy to go get a job. As Ronald Davis, the homeless man from the video, says, some people walk past him and say go get a job, you bum. This upsets him a lot because he is trying to get a job but he can't get the job because he doesn't have enough money to buy nice clothes, so they don't hire him. We are just making his life and the lives of other homeless people worse when we make fun of them instead of helping them.
I think the best thing to give to a homeless person is food. The 2 main things that homeless people like Ronald Davis need are food and shelter. He talked about this in the interview. A homeless person still needs money to buy a room, but giving them food is half of what they need. Of course giving a homeless person money is a lot more helpful to them, but then you run the risk of them spending it poorly. We need to help them out in whatever way we see most fitting. If you aren't comfortable giving money to the homeless then you should at least give them food. Giving them bad looks and saying mean things to them only makes things worse for them and makes their life harder than it already is. The little things that we do to help a person can make a world of difference to them.