Alive (Fully)

“..the glory of God is man fully alive, the glory of God is the human person fully alive, living in loving relationships in harmony with nature and under God.” (Father John Zeyack) “…unless we are creators, we are not fully alive…Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts or having some kind of important career.” (Madeleine L'Engle) “Another of our saints, who lived quite early on in the Church’s life, in the second century in what is now France—Irenaeus of Lyons—wrote that “the glory of God is a man fully alive.” And with that saying, all of the pieces fit together. God’s breath, God’s life, God’s light—these are our experience of God’s glory. When God’s glory truly shines into a man or woman or child, then that person becomes fully alive, because God’s glory is God.” (Father Andrew Stephen Damick) “Irenaeus put it this way: “The glory of God is a human fully alive.” Athanasius wrote, “God became human so that humans might become divine.” Together they tell us that we can’t be truly godly unless we’re first truly human. And we can’t be truly human unless we’re in communion with Christ in his Trinitarian relations. Modern evangelical writer Darrell Johnson has said it well in his book Experiencing the Trinity: “At the center of the universe there is a relationship…It is out of that relationship that we were created and redeemed, and it is for that relationship we were created and redeemed.”…But we need to aim not at love in the abstract but at love in the particular. Each individual needs to ask herself, “What is it that keeps me from love?” Whether it’s anger, indifference, laziness, despondency, impulsiveness, or an evil imagination, St. Anthony advises us that each responding virtue requires its own special tool: “Whoever hammers a lump of iron first decides what he is going to make of it—a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge, or else we labor in vain.” (Bradley Nassif, Ph.D.) “…when practiced in their proper manner, [all Christian disciplines) are not efforts to efface our humanity but to become truly human, to be more fully alive as the icon of the Logos. The image of being transformed into the image of Christ is misunderstood when it is treated in a moralistic manner, “What would Jesus do?” Mere behavior is not the same thing as true union and transformation. We are to become like Christ, not simply act like Christ. This is the true tendency to Beauty that marks us all.” (Father Stephen Freeman) #FatherJohnZeyack #MadeleineLEngle #FatherAndrewStephenDamick #BradleyNassifPhD #FatherStephenFreeman