Thought for the Week, August 3, 2025

Continued from last week.

The love of God is demanding, even as it is unconditional. So God is to be loved “With all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength…”  We must love God with the totality of our being, and that means, above all things.  A thing is lovable to the extent that it is desirable.  A human being who is burning with ardent desire for God is one who has put God first.  Putting God first is not just a matter of saying prayers before every undertaking, before eating and before meeting, before and after a party convention, before and after the daily session of the National Assembly.  There is no doubt it includes praying. 

Many people address words to God.  But praying is more than addressing words to God.  For a man or woman who puts God first, prayer is not just a matter of what you say, it is first and foremost your desire.  But while it is the case that our prayer manifests what we desire, it has to be said that prayer is authentic when it is first and foremost an expression of a desire for God above all things.  The story is told of how God appeared to St Thomas Aquinas, a prolific writer and profound theologian.  “Thomas,” God called him, “you have written so well about me.  What do you desire as reward?” To this question St Thomas responded: “Nothing but you.”  And that was a prayer from which one can learn that prayer is what one lives more than what one says.  Prayer is a life of ardent desire for the greatest good, and that is God.   

In concrete terms, the prayer of a man or woman who puts God first is subject to the greatest commandment.  The one who really prays is the one who loves God more than what he or she is asking of God.  Not to love God more than whatever we ask of God is to practice idolatry.  It is to love a creature more than the Creator.  To love what you ask of God more than God himself is to engage in utilitarian friendship with God.  God then becomes someone who is loved because of what one gets from him and not because of the goodness that God is but because of the goodness that God gives.  We must always ask ourselves what type of relationship we carry on with God: do I love God because of the goodness that God is, or because of the good things that God gives?  Is my prayer an expression of my desire for God, or is it simply a litany of my wants and needs?   

To put God first is to pray, and to pray is to put God first.  Christ has shown that to pray is to put God first in the prayer he taught his disciples: the Our Father.  In this prayer, can be found two sets of petitions.  The first set of petitions has to do with relationship with God, that is, they express  the fact that friendship with God must be the primary motivation of prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven; may your name be held holy, may your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  This set of petitions is placed before the set of petitions that has to do with desire for material things: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  And in continuation of his teaching on prayer, he shows what it means to put God first in prayer by saying, “Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all his justice, and all other things will be given unto you” (Matt 6:33).  

There is more to be said about prayer.  Prayer is not just what you do, it is primarily what you are.  Prayer is a desire, and you are what you desire.  The one who truly prays will desire God and will become one with the God he desires.  And because God is love, to pray and to hate are incompatible.  Whoever truly prays must love because God is love. One of the ironies of life is that people pray while they harbor hatred and hunger and thirst for revenge in their hearts.  We cannot be asking God for his blessings when we are not ready to bless or forgive others.  To do so is to forget that prayer must obey the greatest commandment as reiterated by Jesus: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind….You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 23:37). 

        To hate someone is to desire evil for that person.  But to pray is to desire goodness.  You cannot pray and hate at the same time.  Whoever truly prays does not hate, and whoever hates cannot pray. Here we see the wisdom in our Lord’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:45). And he continues in the next verse by saying: “This will prove that you are sons of your heavenly Father.”  A life of authentic prayer is a life lived in communion with the God of love.  Such a life radiates love, and the radiance of this love is like the radiance of the sun that our heavenly Father allows to rise on the bad and on the good.  The coolness that this love brings is like the rain of the heavenly Father falling on the just and on the wicked. 

This reflection set out to find answers to the first set of questions: what does it mean to put God first?   The second set of question is pending: why must I put God first?  But let what has been said so far be recalled.   

Putting God first is to allow him a place at the centre of our life.  It is to desire the goodness that God is more than any other good, that is, to love God above all things, and to love even those who make life difficult for us.  It is to recognize that the love of God above all things is the only thing that matters in the midst of our myriad of concerns.  In a nutshell, putting God first is living a life that reflects unflinching allegiance to the greatest commandment: you must love God above all things, and you must love your neighbor because of God.  To put God first is to put love first.  And, “in the end there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of this is love” (cf. 1 Cor 13). But is putting God first not an old fashioned theory?   

Contemporary society believes it has many cogent reasons for marginalizing God.  This is a time religion is receiving so much bad press. So much evil has been and is being perpetrated in the name of religion.  From the hijackers of 9-11 in the United States to Boko Haram suicide bombers and abductors in Northern Nigeria. Has it not been said by some that the affirmation of God is the denial of the human person, of his dignity and rights?  In theory and in practice, has God not been rightly marginalized so that the human being can take his rightful place?   

It would seem the universe cannot contain God and man.  One of the two has to give way.  Overwhelmed by accomplishments in science and technology, some believe human beings have what it takes to marginalize and eliminate God.  God, it would seem is no longer needed.  The disappearance of God is considered to be an absolutely necessary condition for the appearance of the human being. Are we not looking for God because of heightened insecurity in our world, just as many who had not stepped inside any Church for decades flocked the Churches in America on 9-11?  Is Freud’s thesis not validated by this search for God brought by the turmoil and uncertainty we face in politics, the economy and related spheres?  To be continued.