Thanksgiving is the foundation of Christian prayer, yet often seems like an obligation or afterthought to the time I want Jesus to spend fixing my problems. Awareness of its importance is one reminder not to skimp on gratitude in prayer, and so I have been looking at teachings on it over the course of the last several weeks.
This excerpt is from Saint Gregory's teaching on the Lord's Prayer and is a very circumspect reflection on how objective inspection of life yields more than enough reasons for gratitude to God.
In return for all that we have received, we have but one gift to exchange with the Benefactor – prayer and thanksgiving.
I can envision the possibility that we could extend our conversation with God in thanksgiving and prayer for the whole duration of life.
Nevertheless, we would still fall so short in adequate exchanged value, as if we had never even begun to think about a return gift to the Benefactor.
For example, the Lord’s generosity is received in all dimensions of time measured in three parts the past, the present, and the future.
If you think of the present, it is in Him that you live. If the future, it is He who is the hope of your expectations. If the past, you did not even exist before you were created by Him.
You benefited by receiving your very existence from Him. Once born, you benefited by living and moving in Him (Acts 17:28), as the Apostle says.
Your future hopes are dependent on the same divine energy… for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ʻFor we are also His offspring.ʼ
Only the present is at your disposal, but even if you never cease giving thanks to God, you will barely render satisfaction for the gift of the present.
Neither for the future, nor for the past, can you conceive some way to give back sufficient thanks to God for all the things you owe Him.
Yet we are so lacking in thanksgiving that we do not show gratitude even in what is possible:
[...] Who has laid out the earth beneath my feet? Who has given me reason to make the seas passable? Who has established heaven for my sake? Who lights up the sun before my eyes? Who “makes springs gush forth in valleys” (Ps 104:10)?
[...] Who has made me, lifeless dust that I am, to share in both life and reason? Who has formed this clay according to the image of the divine seal? Who has restored again in me that ancient beauty of the divine image which had been darkened by sin?
Having been exiled from paradise and deprived of the tree of life, who draws me back to the original bliss from being engulfed in the pit of material life? Scripture says, “There is no one who has understanding” (Rom 3:11).
If we contemplated these things, we would offer endless thanksgiving without ceasing throughout our entire life. But now nearly all human beings are quick to pursue only material things.
[...] But no word whatever is said about God’s true blessings, whether those visible or those promised.
Gregory of Nyssa (c 335 – after 394): First Homily on The Lord’s Prayer.
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