Holy gratitude
It is good and right to give thanks to God throughout the day.
What words can adequately describe God’s gifts? They are so numerous that they defy enumeration. They are so great that any one of them demands our total gratitude in response.
Yet even though we cannot speak of it worthily, there is one gift which no thoughtful man can pass over in silence. God fashioned man in his own image and likeness; he gave him knowledge of himself; he endowed him with the ability to think which raised him above all living creatures; he permitted him to delight in the unimaginable beauties of paradise, and gave him dominion over everything upon earth.
Then, when man was deceived by the serpent and fell into sin, which led to death and to all the sufferings associated with death, God still did not forsake him. He first gave man the law to help him; he set angels over him to guard him; he sent the prophets to denounce vice and to teach virtue; he restrained man’s evil impulses by warnings and roused his desire for virtue by promises. Frequently, by way of warning, God showed him the respective ends of virtue and of vice in the lives of other men. Moreover, when man continued in disobedience even after he had done all this, God did not desert him.
No, we were not abandoned by the goodness of the Lord.… He bore our infirmities and endured our sorrows. He was wounded for our sake so that by his wounds we might be healed.… He is so good that he asks no recompense except our love: that is the only payment he desires.… When I reflect on all these blessings I am overcome by a kind of dread and numbness at the very possibility of ceasing to love God and of bringing shame upon Christ because of my lack of recollection and my preoccupation with trivialities.
—Saint Basil the Great, Detailed Rules for Monks
IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER…
Do I feel a joyful, loving, insistent obligation to give thanks to God unceasingly?
CLOSING PRAYER
Lord, I am so unworthy of every good gift you give me. Help me to show my gratitude in the way I live my life for you. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, my God and my Savior and the love of my life.
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