Gratitude is a fundamental aspect of the Christian life. God has most generously and lovingly shared everything with us, culminating in the precious gift of salvation, offered to us through Jesus Christ.
When we come to realize the enormity of the divine grace received, we live in love and thanksgiving, offering our lives in service to the One who has given His life for us.
How telling that “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving.”
A failure to participate weekly in Mass is a failure of gratitude towards God.
Grateful for God’s gifts
As we approach Thanksgiving once again, we thank the Lord for our family and friends, our health and our work, our food and our home, and the many spiritual blessings offered to us through the Church and the virtue of faith.
The most fundamental gift we have received from the hands of our Creator is the wonder of life itself, the miracle of existence!
We did not will ourselves to be. We simply found ourselves to be alive, emerging from the murky memories of our early childhood to become the persons we are today.
God did not have to create us, yet He did, out of sheer love and graciousness, seeking to share His being with us for all eternity.
In the first chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul tells us that before God even laid the foundations of the world or set the stars in place, He already knew and loved us from all eternity. Then, at just the right moment, He willed us into being.
This astounding truth tells us that our deepest identity is our status as beloved children of God. We are not an accident or a mistake, a collision of circumstances, or a highly evolved animal.
We are sons and daughters of the Father, purchased with the Precious Blood of Christ and anointed in the power of the Holy Spirit.
How important it is to know this essential fact about ourselves, because if we do not know who we are, then how can we know our mission in this life or our ultimate destiny?
G.K. Chesterton, noted British author and convert to Catholicism said that each human person is “a great might-not-have-been.” What did he mean?
Imagine how many different circumstances had to converge just the way they did for each one of us to be here.
Our parents had to meet, fall in love, and get married. We were conceived, born, and have survived all sorts of illnesses and accidents. Who knows how many tragedies God has protected us from, all unknown to us in the limited vision of this life?
My father hurt his foot in 1951 in the factory where he worked and went to see the company nurse, who was my mother. That is how they met.
I ponder the wonder that, if my father had not suffered that minor accident, my five brothers and I would not exist.
Tweak one little thread in the fabric of our lives and POOF! — we go out of existence! In other words, God really wants us to be here.
God loves us; we exist
Life does not always feel like a gift. We all have moments of intense sorrow, suffering, and pain.
The days can feel like a burden, a weight too heavy to carry.
Sometimes, in the midst of such darkness, we need to make an act of faith to affirm our belief in God, the fundamental goodness of the human project, and the enduring grace of our existence.
From the beginning, God examined His plan for humanity and decided that the world would suffer an incompleteness without you being a part of it.
So, if you ever doubt whether God loves you or not, just contemplate the fact that you exist by His will and grace, and there you have the beautiful answer of His mercy and compassion.
This wonder at the gift of life is why the Church is so passionate about protecting and nurturing every person that God has created, especially the unborn, the disabled, the poor, the weak, and the dying.
In a world that holds life cheap and which snuffs out the lives of so many of our brothers and sisters, the Church stands up to proclaim peace, justice, mercy, and compassion as the hallmarks of humanity.
We Catholics proclaim this value of human existence through the actions of feeding, housing, healing, and educating more people than any other institution on the planet.
Because we are created in the image and likeness of God and have been offered redemption through the death and resurrection of Christ, we serve the dignity and flourishing of every person.
This Thanksgiving, thank the Lord for all of the gifts He has poured into your life, but also thank Him for creating the precious vessel into which these blessings have been poured — the wonder of your miraculous existence as a graced participation in the very life of God Himself!