The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive

On the first day of the school year, my theology teacher asked our class: "What is man fully alive?" After several minutes of wise remarks and trying to avoid answering questions, we eventually got to what my teacher wanted us to get: "The Glory of God is Man fully alive." But what exactly do I think this means after having the rest of the school year to reflect on it? Ultimately the glory of God is man fully alive through works of prayer and charity, the sacraments, and in everyday life.

Throughout life, we are always surrounded by hardships. Hardships make life a lot more difficult and often bring our emotional, physical, and spiritual doubts to light. Prayer helps calm us down and helps us discern what is true and what isn't. Prayer, not only in hardships, brings us closer to God. Prayer brings us closer to God because prayer is conservation with God, and our relationship grows much like our relationships with friends grow the more we talk to them. Prayer is glorifying God because in prayer, we acknowledge that God is the ultimate creator, healer, example of mercy, and God is love. In prayer, we grow in our bonds with God and ultimately feel more alive. We also give glory to God in charity by helping others. Also, to me, I feel much better after helping others than I do doing anything else. I think this shows that through glorifying God we truly feel Fully Alive and the most fulfilled.

Secondly, we feel fully alive through our reception of the Sacraments. Through the reception of the Sacraments we receive grace that helps redeem us and bring us closer to God. The Sacraments glorify God because through the sacraments we are following God's will; also, through our reception of the sacraments we often pray, sing, and honor God. The sacraments ultimately make us fully alive by giving us the graces to bring ourselves closer to God and rebuild our bonds; by rebuilding our bonds we feel fully alive.

Finally, we can ultimately feel fully alive through everyday actions. Through our everyday actions, we can either follow God's will or reject God and follow the Devil's. I believe here we can truly see that the Glory of God is man fully alive. You can tell this is true because every time you choose the Devil's way, dont you usually feel bad? But whenever you choose God's path, you usually feel really good and glad that you chose the just and right way. This makes it easier to realize that glorifying God makes us feel much better than glorifying the Devil.

Through charity, prayer, the sacraments, and everyday life we glorify God. We glorify God by showing his greatness and trying our best to grow closer to him. Most people will agree with me that by following God's will, they feel good and better than they would have choosing the wrong path. Through these actions, and all actions that ultimately bring us closer to God, we fulfill the statement: "The Glory of God is Man fully Alive." and will truly become alive.