Gifts from the Father above

‘Blue, blue, God loves you’, the colour for the day and a childhood adage, but one which played eloquently at the Franciscan House of Prayer’s Eighth Day of Empowerment at the Guaico Government High School.

The good weather was just one of the many perfect gifts received, befitting the theme of the day: Every good gift comes from the Father above.

We began with the Holy Rosary and swiftly picking up the pace with rousing praise and worship from the inimitable St Anthony’s Music Ministry from Point Fortin. Fr Robert Christo soon had everyone with hands up in the air praising Jesus, heralding the gift of knowledge soon to come from this Trini-to-the-bone son of God.

We learned that “All that we are is gift and every perfect gift comes from the Father above”. We heard that no amount of human love, no amount of sensual love can come close to the gift of love from God. We were reminded that we needed to live a life without deception; to live a life where we first loved God; to first find the freedom of love which would allow us to stop looking for love in all the wrong places.

We understood that the Church cannot save you; neither would clinging to religion or sitting in church. It is the gift of God’s love that saves! We serve Jesus who does not leave bridges; He is full circle—life, death and Resurrection. The Jesus Cycle!

Through Fr Christo’s teaching we understood that every good gift came from God, not from employment, money or position.

We were advised like Peter in Luke 5:1, to throw our nets back in the water and find the empowerment to catch all manner of fish without the net’s being broken—to launch into the deep and find God at the centre of our being, of our core, of our gift!

After the break, came Fr Trevor Nathasingh, asking us to look for the gift in the storms of our lives, for it is precisely in these storms that we are able to find our swimming legs. We have a choice to live by Psalm 23, with His rod and staff to guide us to still waters.

And as we witness the blessings and gifts we receive from God, we can longer be superficial Christians, for we have been invited to the Cross of Jesus to build intimacy with God, to unwrap the gift of our relationship with the Holy Spirit. We can say ‘yes’ to the gift and open ourselves to the mercies of God which are new every morning.

Finally, we came to the highlight of the day, the quiet storm of Holy Mass. Fr Nathasingh pointed the way through the Gospel of John 16, to that model of behaviour left us as gift by Jesus. “Ask the Father in my name and He will give unto you”. It meant therefore, that as gift, everything that we do as forgiven instruments of God, should point the way of others, to Jesus who has done great things for us and can do great things for others. It means that as a Christian follower of God that we need to live in the Father’s will and bear good fruit which will channel our neighbours back to God. – St Dominic’s Youth Ministry, Morvant