The First Commandment, Part 1

(Plain Text Version)

The First Commandment: I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange gods before Me.
God has revealed Himself to us as the creator of everything. Only God exists on His own. Everything else owes its existence to God.
If we would take just a few minutes to think about our total dependance on God, we would live our lives differently. We would ask God to direct our thoughts. We would enjoy doing what God wants us to do. We would trust God completely.
As we study the Ten Commandments, let us put ourselves in God’s hands. Let us see God as the One who loves us completely and wants us to have a good life.
What the First Commandment Requires
The First Commandment requires us to recognize God for who He is. We must do more than to simply agree that God exists. God must be everything in our lives.
Because of God’s greatness, we have the duty to adore God, to pray to Him, and to offer sacrifices to Him.
Adoration
By adoration, we mean that we use our thoughts and actions to recognize God’s unlimited goodness. We adore God by obeying His commands. More importantly, we adore God by loving Him in return for His love for us. We love God by prayer and sacrifice.
Prayer
Prayer is a conversation with God. When we pray, we become aware of God’s presence, we raise our minds and hearts to God, and we talk to God. Prayer can be vocal or mental, in a group or individually, with our own words or with words composed by others.
When we pray, we can tell God that we adore Him as our creator. We can tell God that we love Him. We can thank Him for the blessings He gives us. We can ask for His mercy for our sins. We can ask Him for the graces to reach heaven.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is the highest form of prayer. To sacrifice means to willingly give up to God something precious. We offer sacrifices to show our complete dependence on God and to express our love for God.
God blesses us with many things which are necessary or enjoyable. He also puts important people into our lives. God causes or permits some of them to be taken away. When we willingly let go of them, they become sacrifices.
Here is a question we should ask ourselves: Is my self-will so strong that I am unwilling to let God exercise His will in my life? Our happiness depends on the answer.
The Greatest Sacrifice
The most perfect sacrifice we can offer is the Sacrifice of the Mass. In the Mass Jesus combines our self-surrender with His self-surrender and offers them to God the Father.
Many thanks to: Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., Pocket Catholic Catechism, 1989, Doubleday
Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., Modern Catholic Dictionary, 2001, Eternal Life

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