Seeing God each day as the God of Miracles is a beautiful way to be thankful. If our eyes are open to the many small miracles He lays before us each day, we see how much He is working in our lives! Let us be more aware of this in the details of our every day walk of life…
Fr. Raoul Plus, Uncommon Virtue: Everyday Methods for Attaining Spiritual Excellence
Knowing How to be Grateful
A soul who was blessed by God in an extraordinary manner, Marie-Antoinette de Geuser, once wrote these lines: “By my correspondence to grace at every moment, I should like to increase in love in the full measure of the gift which the Lord grants me, in order to be for Him a living act of thanksgiving.
Our heavenly Father has sketched our life. It seems to me that I see my every moment prepared in advance with an infinite love. I am like the little child who tries with all his heart to trace the written pages prepared by his mother.”
At the same time that she applies herself with a perfect fidelity, she exults with an inexpressible gratitude.
More recently, we have read in the Testament Spirituel of the lamented Msgr. Chaptal: “The day when I shall leave this earth, I wish that my last thought be to say once more to the good God, Thank you.” It is dated May 2, 1940, when the prelate was almost eighty years old.
Gratitude is Rare
Why is it that such delicate sentiments are not found in every soul? Alas! We recall the ten lepers who were cured by the good Master but left for home so soon after the miracle. Only one of them sees that such conduct is unbecoming and returns to give thanks to our Lord.
“And the other nine?” Jesus cannot refrain from asking.
The other nine? They disappeared without leaving any trace! Why?
To explain the little gratitude that we have toward God, there are reasons that depend on the actions of divine Providence and those which depend on our innate indifference. God showers blessings upon us every moment, but He does it without revealing Himself. We do not see Him act. He is there, behind the screen of second causes. But because He who is the first cause of everything is hidden, we attend only to the gifts He grants. The figure of the donor, His hands, His heart, escape us.
God preserves us in existence at every moment. For this, as much power is needed, according to our way of speaking, as was required at the time of our origin to create us out of nothing. Who gives any thought to this fact?
If from this example taken in the natural order, we then pass to the supernatural order, who thinks at the time of a child’s baptism of an unheard-of marvel? The Blessed Trinity comes to take its abode, without a sound but nevertheless really, in this weak, whimpering creature?
A priest consecrates, and the little bell rings for the elevation. I ask you, who even among the fervent realizes fully the sublime beauty of what has taken place?
Are we not all more or less like the patriarch Jacob? He stretches himself out on the ground in the evening, and God sends him the great vision of the ladder. In the morning he awakens, and not seeing anything extraordinary around him, the landscape having remained unchanged from the evening before, he cries out, “Indeed the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” (Gen. 28:16).
God is everywhere around us and works for us incessantly, but we do not notice Him. Not only is God’s dispensation of His benefits invisible, but for our benefit, it goes on uninterruptedly. On our part, this should be the chief reason for being grateful. Psychologically, in fact, one scarcely appreciates what one receives in the usual way. Light comes to us every morning; our heart drives the blood in our veins every fraction of a second; our lungs take in at every respiration the oxygen which continually bathes us. Who thinks of thanking God?
Ah! If there is a cessation, if the gift for one reason or other is broken off, we learn by its loss that it was a gift. Furthermore, our lack of courtesy is such that instead of thanking God for the times when He granted us His munificence, most frequently, we can only complain when He has temporarily withdrawn this munificence.
Weighed down as we are with material things, even we, the faithful, lack a spirit of faith. Preoccupied with worldly affairs, immersed in the things of sense, we have great difficulty in rising to things spiritual.
Not only are we wanting in interior sensibility, but we are wanting in love. Our hearts are small; we gain possession of something we have coveted. Perfect! We forget all the rest.
Here we touch on the principal obstacle: the absence of the filial spirit, the spirit that must mark the children of God. We often say to the Lord that He is Our Father; but that is a mere formula.
A well-trained child receives nothing from his parents without saying immediately: “Thank you, Papa! Thank you, Mama!” In our childhood days, if it happened that we were carried away by the beauty or value of a gift and forgot its giver, a voice asked: “What do you say?” If we were content to stammer out only the word “Thanks,” the voice again asked: “Thanks to whom?”
It was very necessary then, willingly or unwillingly — let us hope that it was always willingly — to proclaim the title of the benefactor. It is not without difficulty that we have learned how to be grateful to people. Do children in every Christian home learn how to say “Thank you” to God?
Fr. Faber rightly notes how we importune God when we want to obtain a favor! After having received it, in what proportion do we express our gratitude? The failure to express thanks is not, like sin, an offense against God by those who are His enemies. It is an offense committed by those who call themselves His friends but whose love is too imperfect to rise to disinterestedness.
In Heaven, the principal prayer of the elect is the prayer of thanksgiving together with that of adoration. We should live as much as possible as if we were already in Heaven, seeking the glory of God rather than our own little personal advantages and bursting into gratitude for His benefits.
The act of thanksgiving is one of the most perfect forms of love.
Why the Act of Thanksgiving?
A modern author has made this statement: “If anyone were able to recall, were it only for a second, all the details of any scene of his childhood, he would fall dead from sadness.”
Such pessimism toward the past! Would it not be much more correct to say, “He would fall into an ecstasy of gratitude?”
What benefits have not been showered upon us, and at every moment, at every period of our life! He has given us general benefits, that is, those which have been granted us in common with our fellow men.
Some are natural benefits: the air which we breathe, the light by which we see, the nourishment which sustains our life. Someone has written the History of a Mouthful of Bread in order to explain to children the complexity of human labor. Why did he not write it to show God’s laborious concern to lavish upon us maternal care?
What are we to say of supernatural benefits, of that which constitutes divine life within us, the gift of sanctifying grace to Adam at the beginning of the world? And after Adam lost all by Original Sin, the more beautiful restoration of it — melius reformasti — of the divine in the human, with all that it includes, the coming of the Word of God on earth, the Virgin Mary, and the Church, with its teaching authority which protects the faith and its sacraments to nourish it?
“If during our whole life,” St. Gregory of Nyssa used to say, “we conversed with God without the least distraction, and if we did nothing but express our gratitude to Him, we would be far from counterbalancing our thanks with His benefits for the shortest instant of time.”
Nothing is more true. Only benefits are accorded to all of us. How can one count the particular favors distributed by God to each one: the gift of life, the blessing of a Christian country, the good examples given, the temptations warded off, the sacraments received, the sermons heard, the interior inspirations, the holy aspirations, the possibilities and fruitfulness of the apostolate?
Examples of Grateful Souls
However little we may be in the habit of meditating on the goodness of God, we know that Fr. Martinez, a Peruvian Jesuit, had trained himself to say Deo gratias four hundred times a day and encouraged others to do the same;
that St. Paul never separated from his prayer that of thanksgiving, as if for him there could be no real prayer if the act of thanksgiving was not connected with it;
that St. Paul of the Cross, touching with his cane the flowers along the road, entreated them at least to excite in him gratitude to God;
that St. Gertrude devoted the sixth of her Exercises to giving thanks;
that St. Ignatius of Loyola prescribed, in the examination of conscience, which he recommends to be made twice a day, that we should train ourselves to be grateful by the examination of the mercies of God on our behalf, and we know that he himself not only thanked God for graces received but even thanked for those graces which God would not have failed to bestow on numerous persons if they had deigned to correspond to grace.
Dominating all these is the Virgin Mary as she sings her Magnificat. It can be said without deceiving ourselves that the lives of most of the saints are a perpetual Deo gratias.
On the contrary, when the supernatural begins to ebb, sighs and complaints begin.
Gratitude in Time of Trial
When a trial is sent to us, it is more difficult than at other times to know how to be thankful to God. We need to acquire sufficient supernatural strength in order to believe that God remains a Father when He makes us feel the weight of the Cross.
Behind the suffering that occupies the foreground, we must learn to discover the heart of the One who, by this trial, wishes either to make us grow more spiritually, to permit us to expiate our sins, or to identify us more with His divine Son and to make us participate more fully in the Redemption.
An admirable example is found in the grandmother of Msgr. de Ségur, Countess Rostopchine, who embraced Catholicism at the age of forty. Having learned at ninety about the blindness that had come upon the prelate, she wrote to him: “Happy Gaston, for having entered into the life of the blessed announced by the Savior! The God of our souls treats you as one of His elect: He takes away your sight; He illumines your soul.”
Such ought to be always the attitude of souls who have faith. Let us listen here again to the saints.
St. Margaret Mary blessed God for the sufferings He sent her: “On my behalf, thank our sovereign Master for honoring me so lovingly and liberally with His precious Cross! . . . What shall I render to the Lord for the great benefits that He bestows on me?”
St. Teresa rejoices when God prevents the realization of one or the other of her plans for a foundation; St. Francis of Assisi encourages his companion to thank God if it happens to both of them to be refused everywhere!
“Teach me this lesson of gratitude, my Lord! Let me live in joy based on a deep appreciation of all Your unspeakable gifts—my faith, my health, my country, my loved ones. And when You choose to deprive me of any of them for a time, let me love You more, not less—let me see Your plan in all that happens. I am grateful, my Lord. With a heart brimming with joy and gratitude, I thank You for Yourself and all Your gifts!” ~ My Meditation on the Gospel, Confraternity of the Precious Blood
As we work to accept our husbands—both their virtues and their flaws—we become more like Christ, who accepts us as we are and calls us to grow in holiness. It is through acceptance that we create a loving and supportive environment where both of us can thrive. If you enjoy this video , please Like and Subscribe.
Beautiful wire-wrapped Blessed Mother rosaries! Each link is handmade and wrapped around itself to ensure quality. Available here.
~ Available here.
Following in the footsteps of the popular Let’s Have a Tea Party! Book, Emilie Barnes introduces children to good manners. Fascinating facts explain why we follow certain rules, and helpful hints demonstrate courtesy in a child-friendly way.
~ Available here.
Bob and Emilie Barnes show special little boys in your life how good sportsmanship, table manners, and appropriate language create happy times. Lively illustrations by artist Michal Sparks will captivate your favorite little gentleman in the making.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Recent Comments