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.

Glory of God is man fully alive

At the beginning of the school year, my teacher Mr. Cole asked us the question: "What does it mean to be man fully alive?" I thought I had a general idea but if he asked me I could not give him a good answer. As the school year went along, I reflected on this and learned in his class. Now I feel like I can answer this question.
What does it mean to be man fully alive? Man fully alive is someone that works his hardest at everything he does, and by working his hardest he gives glory to God. Whether it is a kid to an adult that has to work, it all applies the same. It does not matter how old or mature you are, we as humans should strive to be men fully alive. God wants us to be happy and to work. It is human nature to work and when we work hard it helps us and gives glory to God. If you work at something but do not work your hardest, you do not feel completely satisfied and you do not give glory to God because it was not your hardest. When we work our hardest, we may fail but we will get better each time we work. When we get better, it sets the bar a little bit higher on how much responsibility we have to give glory to God. A kid working his hardest gives the same amount of glory to God as a grown up working his hardest. We are all equal, and we are all called to give glory to God by working our hardest. I might of gave this answer to my teacher, but I would not understand what it really meant until I learned and learned in his class all year. Thanks Mr. Cole, I will try my hardest each and everyday, and I will try to get others to work their hardest too. Also if you want to learn more about how to man fully alive, read the book Fully Alive Action Guide: A Journey That Will Change Your Life by Ken Davis. I hear it is supposed to be a good book about this topic.

Saints

Often when Catholics are troubled by or need guidance on something, they pray to Saints. But why do they pray to Saints and what are Saints? Saints with a lowercase 's' are those people who have reached the glory of Heaven. Saints with a capital 'S' are people who are recognized by the Church as having remained faithful during their time on earth, are recognized by the Church to be great examples to follow, and have reached the glory of Heaven. Saints have to be canonized by the Church and once canonized they receive their own holiday where Church followers look back at what they have accomplished, learn from their actions, and pray to them for guidance. Saints are prayed to for guidance because during difficulty in their life they remained faithful to God. People pray to Saints because they have set great examples for all Christians to follow and are usually recognized for/represent some aspect of life (lost items, travel, throats, chastity). 956: "The intercession of the saints-Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven fix the whole Church more firmly in holiness.... They do not cease to intercede with the Father for us, as they proffer the merits which they acquired on earth through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus.... So by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped.” So in conclusion, Saints and saints are prayed to because they intercede for us to God and provide great examples for us to follow in our spiritual life.

Vocation

Every person in life is called to a specific vocation. Everyone is called to a vocation to be apart of the common priesthood as well as join in the universal call to holiness. Becoming a priest or a consecrated is not the only way to join the universal call to holiness; rather, we can join this calling by simply participating in life to the utmost potential and to the best ability that we can whether this means following a teacher's instructions, cleaning toilets, or cooking food. But people that know of God are also required to participate in the sacraments and try their best to rebuild their relationship with God. We are also called to a more specific vocation: marriage, consecration, or holy orders. Each person will either be called to marriage with a spouse, becoming a brother or sister, or becoming a priest. These vocations are more specific and decide how we take part in the Church for the rest of our life: laity or apart of the hierarchy. Through discernment and prayer we can discover our true vocation; it takes time and a lot of prayer to discover what we will ultimately become.

"Life is not about how hard we get hit, it is about hard we get hit and keep going."

Why does God allow failure, pain, misery, sadness in our goals in life? He makes all these obstacles in our life to help us.Would you just want to be the best of the best without even trying? Without putting in the work to succeed? No, when you put in the work and you try your hardest that is when you feel inexplicable  God wants us to follow our dreams, but our dreams can not be achieved overnight. You have to put in hours and hours and hours to get better at your goal.
"Life is not about how hard we get hit, it is about hard we get hit and keep going." This is my life moto. I was inspired to write this blog post of the inspirational video: "Why do we fall" on you tube. Life is not about who got the most troubles, it is about who had the most troubles and kept going and succeeded. In the video, it talks about how pain is will go away with time if you try your hardest, but if you do not try your hardest the pain will always be with you. The physical pain will go away with time, and if you try your hardest you will succeed the next time, but if you do not. Then the emotional pain will always be there, where you ask yourself if I had just tried harder could I of succeeded? This is why you should never give up, and always try your hardest. God puts these obstacles in your life to help you with your goals and your character. It is during the hard times, that show who we really are inside.
Failure can happen at any time and any place. I have failed myself a lot, and I have come back stronger from every failure. I do not like failure, but failure helps me strive for better. Good examples of people that have never given up and kept trying their hardest are professional athletes in any sport. Many of them have gone through extremely hard times, but have prevailed. They have used those hard times to help them succeed. All of us should do the same in our lives, whether it is to become a professional athlete or a doctor. Do your best always, and never give up. Those difficult times determine who you are, and who you will become.

Autistic Girl Expresses Unimaginable Intelligence

Lots of people will just look at people like Carly, an autistic girl, and judge them. They will give them the term as mentally retarded. Then one day, Carly changed many people's views on autism. One that day, she rushed to the laptop and wrote two words, "Hurt, Help." In those two words, we realize she is smarter than we take her to be. Later on she writes all the time on the computer, and these two sentences took me by surprise, "I am autistic, but that is not who I am. Take time to know me, before you judge me." She is just like us in every way except by the way her brain functions. This is one thing I will take away from this video: Do not judge people even if they seem mentally retarded. I try not to judge people, but at times like when I see a person like Carly I feel bad and place the title on her as Mentally Ill. She might seem like that, but she is just like everyone else. I may have judged her not in a mean way, but no one should be judged. I do feel sorry for her, that she has to deal with this problem in her life but she is proving not only to me and her parents but to everyone in the world that she is a normal kid inside a different body. The catholic church does not want anyone to be judged meanly or wrongly and this video shows how people's interpretations of people might not always be right. So I have one message to Carly and that is: Keep doing what you are doing, and showing people that disabilities do not change who you are.