Our whole life is a life of gratitude

The solitary life then is the life of one drawn by the Father into the wilderness there to be nourished by no other spiritual food than Jesus. For in Jesus the Father gives Himself to us and nourishes us with His own inexhaustible life. The life of solitude therefore must be a continual communion and thanksgiving in which we behold by faith all that goes on in the depths of God, and lose our taste for any other life or any other spiritual food.We live in constant dependence upon this merciful kindness of the Father, and thus our whole life is a life of gratitude – a constant response to His help which comes to use at every moment." 

-- Thoughts in Solitude by Tomas Merton

Gratitude for the Inestimable Benefit of our Redemption

"Let us now consider the supreme benefit of divine love, the redemption of man. But I feel myself so unworthy, so unfitted to speak of such a mystery that I know not where to begin or where to leave off, or whether it were not better for me to be silent altogether. Did not man, in his lethargy, need an incentive to virtue, better would it be to prostrate ourselves in mute adoration before the incomprehensible grandeur of this mystery than vainly essay to explain it in imperfect human language. It is said that a famous painter of antiquity, wishing to represent the death of a king's daughter, painted her friends and relatives about her with mournful countenances. In her mother's face grief was still more strongly depicted. But before the face of the king he painted a dark veil to signify that his grief was beyond the power of art to express.

Now, if all that we have said so inadequately expresses the single benefit of creation, how can we with any justice represent the supreme benefit of Redemption? By a single act of His will God created the whole universe, diminishing thereby neither the treasures of His riches nor the power of His almighty arm. But to redeem the world He labored for thirty-three years by the sweat of His brow; He shed the last drop of His Blood, and suffered pain and anguish in all His senses and all His members. What mortal tongue can explain this ineffable mystery? Yet it is equally impossible for me to speak or to be silent. Silence seems ingratitude, and to speak seems rashness. Wherefore, I prostrate myself at Thy feet, O my God, beseeching Thee to supply for my insufficiency, and if my feeble tongue detract from Thy glory, while wishing to praise and magnify it, grant that Thy elect in Heaven may render to Thy mercy the worship which Thy creatures here below are incapable of offering Thee.

After God had created man and placed him in the delights of the terrestrial paradise, by the very favors which should have bound him to the service of his Creator he was emboldened to rebel against Him. For this he was driven into exile and condemned to the eternal pains of Hell. He had imitated the rebellion of Satan; therefore, it was just that he should share his punishment.

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Having brought such misery upon himself, man became the object of the divine compassion, for God was more moved by the condition of His fallen creature than He was indignant at the outrage offered to His goodness. He resolved to restore man and reconcile him with Himself through the mediation of His only Son. But how was reconciliation effected? Again, what human tongue can express this mercy? Through our Mediator Christ such a friendship was established between God and man that the Creator not only pardoned His creature and restored him to His grace and love, but even became one with him. Man has become so one with God that in all creation there is no union that can be compared to this. It is not only a union of grace and love, but it is a union of person also. Who could have thought that such a breach would be so perfectly repaired? Who could have imagined that two beings so widely separated by nature and sin should one day be united, not only in the same house, at the same table, and in a union of grace, but in one and the same person [that is, in Christ]?

Can we think of two beings more widely separated than God and the sinner? Yet where will we find two beings more closely united? "There is nothing," says St. Bernard, "more elevated than God, and nothing more base than the clay of which man is formed. Yet God has with such great humility clothed Himself in this clay, and the clay has been so honorably raised to God, that we may ascribe to the clay all the actions of God, and to God all the sufferings of the clay." (Super Cant. Hom. 59 et 64)."

-- The Sinner's Guide by Ven Louis of Granada, op

Praise your Creator by following the path He meant you to follow

"The choir is filled with the light of an early spring morning. With all the windows open to the south one might almost as well be in the garden, and the birds cry good morning to the sun from the topmost branches of every tree. As I kneel in the first faint sunlight, the first act is to thank God for the grace of one's vocation, while I can be happily certain that every other sister in choir is doing the same. God loves gratitude, and there is no greater grace for which to be grateful to Him than the grace of vocation, whatever that vocation may be.

Whenever we follow our true vocation, whether we are aware of it or not, we are rendering glory to God. It may be conscious or unconscious, but it is always praise of the Almighty, because it is following His divine plan for us, doing the thing for which He created us, fitting into His scheme. In this sense, vocation always brings with it its own grace. How many thousands of people in the world, and all over the world, would be surprised to know that they are praising their Creator by the mere act of following the path He meant them to follow, using the gift He gave them, and doing whatever they happen to have chosen supremely well, just because the gift and the choice come from Him!

They would raise their eyebrows no doubt; they would smile a superior smile; they would shrug their shoulders; but that would not in any way alter the fact. It is a praise which we cannot deny to God so long as we use His gifts and follow His plan for us. We may call it by every other name; we may try to steal the glory by glorifying, as we think, in our successes as if we were the authors of them; but nothing can alter the fact that these are the successes of the Divine Creator, and that His creatures are only displaying the wonders of God by showing what richness He has put into human nature, and what variety into human capacity.

Here we have the reason why people who are genuinely following their vocation usually do whatever they are doing so well, or, if not perhaps so quite so well as they sometimes think, at all events so happily. It is because they are using the grace of God which goes with the gift and the call to use it - the grace which accompanies any action of God and enables us to fulfill His purpose."

-- Catch us those little foxes by A Carmelite Nun

Memorial of Saint Basil the Great & Saint Gregory Nazianzen

"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. Even the insult we offered to our Benefactor by despising his gifts did not destroy his love for us. On the contrary, although we were dead, our Lord Jesus Christ restored us to life again, and in a way even more amazing than the fact itself, for his state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God, but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave.

He bore our infirmities and endured our sorrows. He was wounded for our sake so that by his wounds we might be healed. He redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for our sake, and he submitted to the most ignominious death in order to exalt us to the life of glory. Nor was he content merely to summon us back from death to life; he also bestowed on us the dignity of his own divine nature and prepared for us a place of eternal rest where there will be joy so intense as to surpass all human imagination.

How, then, shall we repay the Lord for all his goodness to us? He is so good that he asks no recompense except our love: that is the only payment he desires. To confess my personal feelings, 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 became of my lack of recollection and my preoccupation with trivialities."
 
-- From the writings of St Basil the Great
 
* Today the Church celebrates the memorial of these two great doctors of the church. You may learn more about them by visiting this site. Our brethren observing the 1962 liturgical calendar ("Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite") observe St Basil on 14 June and St Gregory on 9 May.

It is up to me to answer for the great deeds of divine love

"God has given me so many gifts, so much strength and power, so great a richness in maturity and grace that there are no words to express - much less to measure - my gratitude. Now it is up to me to make answer for the great deeds of divine love. And in freedom. For God compels nobody - just as I myself cannot compel a beloved person to do anything. It must be out of love." -- Bl Karl Leisner

-- The Victory of Father Karl by Otto Pies, SJ