Text Box: 70 Cedar Lane, Teaneck, NJ 07666 Phone: 201-837-2200 Volume. XX No:09 September 2008 St. Peter's Mar Thoma ChurchText Box: ~Vicar’s Message~ Dearly beloved in Christ, Greetings!. In St.John.12:43 we read, “They loved praise from men more than praise from God”. Our enslavement to human respect ! Human respect is allowing the opinion of men to be more important than the truth of God. We have to stand always before our Lord , to act in perfect truth before Him and before men, and take the consequences. We must be free of human praise so that we can keep the gaze of our hearts on Christ alone. But think what we do. We perhaps blunder and find it so hard to admit simply-we want to hide it, modify its proportions. We crave to be some body, to be important to get a feel of ourselves as mattering. Of course we matter, absolutely , to God ; but this isn’t what we want! We want an importance flowing from our own self, our own worth and merits. Our natural being claims independence, a right to fullness. But human’s essence, human’s true being , is a ‘for - Godness’. This actually constitutes a human being. It is not something added to our being, not apart of our human reality – it is the whole of us. Our very being is a self- communication of God: the measure of our being is the measure of God’s self- communication to us. The more fully God communicates himself to us (and this depends on us), the more full we are. We are full when God has been allowed to give Himself to us to the extent of our capacity. This is union with God. Jesus is the One in whom this self communication of God was plenary, ‘in Him dwells all the fullness of God’, and it is for this reason we can say He is God. We can say He is God only because He is fully human- all His potential for- Godness was activated and fulfilled. Understanding this fundamental truth of human’s being we can work more speedily and thoroughly at our reorientation towards God alone. To affirm our absolute for-Godness in practice calls for the leap of faith, and utmost generosity based on faith. To live in continual affirmation of our true being calls for self –denial. This is the meaning of ‘Being for God.’ We must not love praise from men more than praise from God. God bless,