For those of us that remember what life was like before social media it's easy
to look at the quality of relationships of some young people today with a bit of
cynicism. Like you know back in my day if you wanted to have a relationship with
somebody you had to go through the somewhat traumatic and awkward
experience of introducing yourself to them and spending time with them and
talking to them and if you wanted more than that you had to actually ask them
to be your boyfriend or girlfriend and then watch as an expression of pity and
superiority washes over their face just as they utter that terrifying phrase, "I
think we should just be friends." Anyways my point is that real relationships of
intimacy take effort and work. You need to break through those superficial
stages of just being familiar with somebody until you reach a point where
you can have deep conversations with them, where you can spend time with them
and just feel like you can be yourself, or where you can be really vulnerable
with them and trust them. Those kinds of relationships take time and effort which
is why I don't get it when some people look at the amount of effort that some
Christians put into knowing God and their faith and ridicule them by saying,
"It's not about all that it's just about a relationship with Jesus."
As a Catholic, this is something I hear a lot from non Catholics especially in the
comments of my videos. They'll say that all that religiosity in the Catholic
Church is just a distraction or worse it's some kind of idolatry and that what
you really need is just a relationship with Jesus. Now I've spent time in non
Catholic churches prior to having become Catholic myself and so I have some
familiarity with what this kind of a relationship with Jesus looks like and
if I had asked back then, you know, what is it and how do I have one the reply
would be something like, "Well you just say this prayer and ask Jesus to be your
Lord and Savior and then you're good and if you want you can get baptized but
that doesn't really matter." And something about that has an uncanny similarity to
the kinds of relationships that we have on social media; just accept God's friend
requests and now you have a relationship with him but honestly for all the
friends that we have on a platform like Facebook how many of them can we say
that we actually have an authentic relationship with them? What the Catholic
Church has always recognized and encouraged is that if you want to have a
relationship with God you have to put some effort into it. You have to spend
time with him just like you would with anybody else you wanted to have a
relationship with. And so for Catholics what that looks like is time spent in
prayer and to make that easier we have things like formal prayers. That's why we
have something like the Rosary and yeah, I get it,
formal scripted prayer can seem impersonal but that format is what leads
to something deeper. It's the same reason we have social customs that help get us
past that initial awkwardness of an introduction to somebody new. Like when
you meet someone, for example, you would shake their hand and use a standardized
greeting like, "Good day nice to meet you or "sup yo?!" Then with those out of the
way we can get into small talk and I get it, I hate small talk as an introvert.
nobody wants to talk about the weather or traffic but it's what leads to
something deeper. So I recognize the necessity of it. Like, "Hey how about this
beautiful weather we've been having." "I know it's great I finally was able to
take my pet armadillo out for a walk." "You have a pet armadillo that's amazing I
love pet armadillos!" Okay so now we're getting somewhere and it's all
because we faithfully observed that social template. Formal prayers are like
that - they give us a script and a starting point with God. But God doesn't
just want to be pals with you. Being part of your armadillo enthusiast club isn't
really gonna cut it. God is love. God wants deep and profound
intimacy with you. He wants you to know him the way he knows you. Jesus said that
we are to love God with all our heart mind soul and effort and the Bible is
full of sayings about how God wants to live in us and we in him. That's a kind
of intimacy that exceeds even spousal relationships and what is it that
distinguishes those kinds of relationships from just mere friendships?
Well it's gotta get physical. So how do we go beyond that friendzone level of
intimacy with God and allow Him to live deeply within us as physical beings? Well
that's where the sacraments come in. God made us
physical beings so it should stand to reason that his plan of salvation and
restoration with us, as well as his plan to have deep and profound relationships
with us, should have a physical quality to it.
And that's exactly what we find in the Bible where he gave us sacraments like
baptism and communion. In John 6 Jesus, said that those who eat his flesh and
drink his blood live in him and he lives in them and he didn't mince words here.
He said my my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink and Catholics take
him at his word and understand that this is how he lives in us and transforms us
from the inside out. This is what a true and profound and deep spiritual and
physical relationship with God looks like.
Why else would God need to become physically incarnate if we weren't
supposed to have a physical relationship with him? That wasn't just for the people
that were alive during his 33 year lifespan. It's for all the members of his
body to know him in this way which is why, when we gather and break the bread
of life, we consume it just as the Apostles did at the Last Supper.
Now you can ridicule that as superfluous and unnecessary but if you don't take up
these spiritual practices of prayer and the sacramental life then all you
have with God is an accepted friend request at some point and I'm sorry
that's not a relationship. If you want to go deeper and discover a real
relationship with him, the kind that we were meant to have as both spiritual and
physical beings, then you need to find this thing that you've been ridiculing
as religion but is actually just the effort it takes to have a relationship
with God. Thanks so much for watching guys, if you enjoyed that then please
consider subscribing and liking and come find me on Facebook and Twitter it's a
huge help and you do that it helps us get these videos in front of more and
more people and a big thank you goes out to you uCatholic for presenting these
videos and if you want to support the making of these videos then please
consider supporting my work as a digital media and marketing expert. My company
Holds Worth Design specializes in branding, web and graphic design,
marketing, social media, videography, and all that kind of good stuff so if you
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areas then please send them our way and I'm sure we can help them out.
For more infomation >> Relationship A Beautiful Testing Ground - Duration: 10:42. 
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