Growing in gratitude is not becoming more polite, nor cultivating "positive thinking": it is learning to recognize that everything is gift — life, faith, forgiveness, daily bread, down to our crosses — and to thank the Giver for it. Christian gratitude is not a pleasant mood that depends on fair weather: it is a disposition of the soul that is received, decided, and cultivated, until it becomes second nature.
The most sacred word in the Catholic vocabulary says it plainly enough: the summit of Christian life, the Mass, is called the Eucharist, that is, "thanksgiving". The whole faith holds in this movement: receiving from God, and saying thank you to him. Conversely, Scripture and the saints make ingratitude the hidden root of almost every going astray: forgetting the Giver is the first step toward taking oneself for the source of one's own goods.
The difficulty is that one does not decide one morning to "be grateful" once and for all. Gratitude has degrees: we begin by giving thanks for what pleases us, then we learn to give thanks "in all circumstances", up to that continual thanksgiving which Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity called "a praise of glory". This article describes that practical path: how gratitude grows, by what means, and avoiding which pitfalls.
For the saints' own voice on the neighboring virtues, see How to Grow in Charity, How to Grow in Hope and How to Grow in Trust. For the humble root from which all recognition springs, see How to Grow in Humility; for thanksgiving lived before the Blessed Sacrament, How to Grow in Eucharistic Adoration.
Why Seek to Grow in Gratitude?
"Give Thanks in All Circumstances"
Of all spiritual attitudes, gratitude is one of the rare ones Saint Paul presents explicitly as the will of God. At the end of his first letter to the Thessalonians, he strings together three brief imperatives that form a kind of summary of Christian life:
"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances: this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus." — First Letter to the Thessalonians 5:16-18[1]
The decisive word is "in all circumstances". The commanded gratitude is not reserved for favorable days: it must hold in sickness, failure, and mourning. That is what distinguishes it from mere satisfaction — we are satisfied when all goes well; we give thanks even when all goes ill, because we recognize a loving hand behind events. Saint Paul repeats the same instruction elsewhere: "At all times and for everything, give thanks to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ"[2], and he makes thanksgiving the signature of every Christian act:
"And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." — Letter to the Colossians 3:17[3]
Ingratitude, the Hidden Root of Sin
To grasp what is at stake, we must look at its opposite. The spiritual tradition does not see ingratitude as a mere lack of manners, but as a poisoned root. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, in a famous 1542 letter, goes so far as to make it the worst of sins:
"It seems to me, in the light of the divine Goodness, that ingratitude is the most abominable of sins and must be detested before our Creator and Lord; for it is the forgetting of graces, blessings, and gifts received, and, as such, the cause, the beginning, and the origin of all sins and of all evils." — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, letter to Simão Rodrigues, 18 March 1542[4]
The logic is crystal clear: every sin begins with a forgetting — forgetting what God has done, forgetting every duty received. Whoever vividly remembers having received everything cannot long offend the one who gave him everything. That is why growing in gratitude is no secondary devotion: it means attacking the very root of the ingratitude that makes all other sins possible. Luisa Piccarreta heard Jesus say the same of pride, ingratitude's twin brother:
"Pride is the most terrible ingratitude toward God and the greatest affront one can do to Him; it blinds the soul completely." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 1[5]
The Ten Lepers: Only One Comes Back
The Gospel staged ordinary ingratitude in a brief and terrible page. Ten lepers are healed by Jesus; only one comes back to thank him — and he is a stranger:
"One of them, realizing he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God in a loud voice. He threw himself face down at the feet of Jesus, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan." — Gospel according to Saint Luke 17:15-16[6]
Christ's disappointment is explicit — "Were not all ten made clean? Where are the other nine?"[7] — and it is to the grateful one alone that he says: "Stand up and go: your faith has saved you." The lesson is hard for us: the proportion of the men healed is exactly that of ordinary humanity. Receiving is easy; coming back to say thank you is rare. Growing in gratitude means first refusing to be one of the nine.
What Is Christian Gratitude?
More Than Politeness: A Virtue
Human gratitude is a duty of justice: it is just to acknowledge a benefactor. Saint Thomas Aquinas classes gratitude (gratitudo) among the annexed virtues of justice, alongside religion, which renders to God the worship due to him; ingratitude is treated as the opposite vice[8]. Yet toward God, man can never settle his account: he has received everything, beginning with existence, and can give back nothing that God has not first given him. Gratitude toward God is therefore a justice impossible to pay off — which does not dispense from it, but obliges it to become love: we do not "repay" God, we love him in return. That is why Christian gratitude, without ceasing to be justice, is carried and transfigured by charity (see How to Grow in Charity).
Recognition, Thanksgiving, Praise: A Single Movement
Three words meet as soon as we speak of gratitude, and it is useful to distinguish them without separating them. Recognition is the inward act: acknowledging that such a good is a gift. Thanksgiving is that act expressed, said to God or to men; the Catechism sees in it what "characterizes the prayer of the Church", manifested in the Eucharist[9]. Praise rises a step higher still: we no longer thank only for what God gives, we bless him for what he is.
"Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God! It sings his praise for himself, it gives him glory, beyond what he does, because HE IS." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2639[10]
Recognition looks at the gift; praise looks at the Giver for himself. A maturing gratitude glides little by little from one to the other: we begin by thanking God for his blessings, we end by blessing him for existing, independently of what we receive from him.
Gratitude Is Not a Feeling
This is the most widespread misunderstanding. Gratitude is not the warm emotion that sometimes seizes us before a sunset or a joy received. That emotion is good, but it comes and goes; it depends on mood, health, temperament. The virtue of gratitude, by contrast, is an act of the intellect and the will: I recognize that everything is gift, and I decide to give thanks — whether I feel it or not. That is precisely why it can be commanded "in all circumstances": a feeling cannot be commanded, an act of the will can. Saint Anthony the Great, father of monks, grounds his pedagogy of gratitude in trial on this distinction:
"It would be out of place to thank for the health of the body the physicians who prescribe bitter and unpleasant remedies for us, while refusing to God gratitude for things that seem painful to us, without knowing that everything happens as it should, and for our advantage, through the care of providence." — Saint Anthony the Great, Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers[11]
Recognizing That Everything Is Gift
At bottom, all gratitude holds in a single recognition, which the Catechism formulates with perfect sobriety:
"It is living in thanksgiving: if God is the One, all that we are and all that we possess comes from Him." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 224[12]
There lies the conversion of our gaze. The ungrateful man holds his goods as dues: his health, his talents, his loved ones, even his faith seem to him to go without saying. The grateful man holds them as gifts: he knows he might never have existed, never have known God, never have been forgiven. Growing in gratitude means re-educating this gaze until it sees nothing any more as going without saying — "What have you that you did not receive?", asks Saint Paul[13].
The Link with Humility and Charity
Gratitude does not grow in isolation. It has a root — humility — and an end point — charity. Only the humble are truly grateful, because they do not attribute their goods to themselves; the proud man, who believes himself the source of what he has, thanks no one. Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus understood this: it was from her acknowledged poverty that she drew her song of gratitude. At the other end, gratitude pours itself out in charity: whoever is conscious of having received everything freely gives freely in turn — "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give"[14]. A gratitude that does not make us more generous is not yet mature (see How to Grow in Humility).
The Degrees of Growth in Gratitude
Like every virtue, gratitude unfolds by degrees. Three can be distinguished, which do not exclude one another but fit inside one another: each presupposes the one before and widens it.
Thanking for Felt Blessings
The first degree is the most spontaneous: thanking God for what visibly does good — a healing, a success, a family joy, a grace felt in prayer. This degree is good and must be cultivated, not despised: it is the elementary school of recognition. The danger is not starting there, but staying there — knowing how to thank only so long as blessings are pleasant and recognizable, and falling silent as soon as life hardens.
Giving Thanks "in All Circumstances", Trial Included
The second degree crosses the threshold the first dared not: giving thanks "in all circumstances", including for what wounds. This is not thanking for evil as if it were good — sickness remains an evil, bereavement a tearing — but giving thanks in trial, because we believe God can draw good from it, and that no circumstance escapes his providence. This is the gratitude of Job stripped of everything: "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord!"[15]. This is exactly the point where gratitude ceases to be a feeling and becomes faith.
Continual Thanksgiving: "A Praise of Glory"
The third degree is no longer a series of occasional acts, but a state: the soul becomes thanksgiving. Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, Carmelite of Dijon, left its highest formula, taking up Saint Paul's expression — laudem gloriae, "to the praise of his glory" (Eph 1:12)[16]:
"A praise of glory is a being always in thanksgiving. Each of its acts, of its movements, each of its thoughts, of its aspirations, even as they root it more deeply in love, are like an echo of the eternal Sanctus." — Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, Complete Works[17]
At this degree, gratitude no longer needs occasions: it no longer reacts to occasional blessings, it has become the habitual breathing of the soul, a background "thank you" that holds beneath events. Toward this state tends all growth in gratitude — not multiplying thanks, but becoming, little by little, a grateful being.
Concrete Means for Growing in Gratitude
Gratitude being a virtue, it develops like every virtue: through repeated acts that hollow out a habit. Here are the means most proven by the saints.
Remembering Blessings
The first means is memory. Ingratitude being a forgetting (Saint Ignatius), gratitude is first an act of voluntary memory: concretely recalling what we have received. Saint Ignatius had made it the first step of his daily examen: even before looking at our faults, "to give thanks to God our Lord for the blessings received"[18]. Concretely: taking each evening a moment to name three blessings of the day — not in general, but precisely. This grateful "re-reading" disarms complaint and re-educates our gaze. What we do not name, we forget; what we name, we give back to God.
Living the Mass as Thanksgiving
The central means, for a Catholic, is not to be invented: it has a name and an hour. The Mass is the thanksgiving of the Church. The Catechism recalls that the very word says so:
"The Eucharist means first of all thanksgiving. […] Eucharistein and eulogein recall the Jewish blessings which proclaim — above all during the meal — the works of God: creation, redemption, and sanctification." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1328[19]
Taking part in Mass by explicitly bringing our reasons for gratitude to it, receiving Communion as the greatest of gifts, prolonging it with a thanksgiving after Communion — those few minutes of silence in which we give thanks instead of rushing off — are the school par excellence of gratitude. The holy Curé of Ars grounded on this Eucharistic gift his indignation against avarice of heart:
"What ingratitude it would be to show oneself miserly toward a God who shows himself so lavish! Did he not give all his blood for us on the cross? Does he not give himself to us wholly in the Holy Eucharist?" — Saint John Mary Vianney, Pensées (Thoughts)[20]
To go deeper on this point, see How to Grow in Eucharistic Adoration.
The Morning and Evening "Thank You"
Gratitude is also cultivated through small fixed appointments. On waking, before all else, giving thanks for the day received: this is the counsel Jesus gave to Gabrielle Bossis, recalling the price of a single day offered to God:
"Thank God for this day which is beginning; you can gain so many merits, so much glory… in one day… I allow you to serve Me, to love Me." — Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, He and I (Lui et moi): Spiritual Conversations[21]
In the evening, the grateful re-reading closes the day. In between, we can multiply brief "thank yous", ejaculations, through the hours: a three-word thanksgiving carries more weight than a long distracted prayer, and it weaves little by little that continual thanksgiving of which Elizabeth of the Trinity spoke.
Learning Gratitude from the Psalms and the Magnificat
We learn to give thanks by borrowing the words of those who knew how. The great school is the Psalter, prayer of the Church: many psalms are thanksgivings, and their refrain returns like a heartbeat — "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever"[22]. Its summit is the Magnificat, Mary's prayer become the Church's daily prayer at Vespers:
"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! […] The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name!" — Gospel according to Saint Luke 1:46-49 (the Magnificat)[23]
Praying the psalms of thanksgiving and the Magnificat is not reciting: it is letting our heart be formed by true words, until they become our own.
Thanking in Advance: Confident Gratitude
There is a higher form of gratitude: thanking before having received, because we are sure of God's love. Christ himself practiced it at the tomb of Lazarus: "Father, I thank you for hearing me"[24] — before the miracle. This anticipated gratitude is the reverse of anxiety: instead of fretting over the future, we give thanks in advance for the way God will provide for it. It presupposes and nourishes trust (see How to Grow in Trust and How to Grow in Surrender to God).
Saying Thank You to Men, Sacrament of the Neighbor
Lastly, gratitude toward God is verified and nourished in gratitude toward men. Whoever does not know how to thank his loved ones, his benefactors, those who serve him, will poorly learn to thank God; and reciprocally, saying thank you to our neighbor — truly, looking him in the eye — is a concrete exercise that breaks up selfishness. Gratitude is contagious: a grateful heart makes others better, and a sincere "thank you" is often the smallest and most effective of acts of charity.
Growing in Gratitude at the Heart of Trial
This is the decisive test. Giving thanks when all goes well is within everyone's reach; giving thanks in the night is proper to the strong. There gratitude proves it has become virtue, and not mood.
Giving Thanks in the Night
Christian gratitude does not deny pain: it passes through it. It does not say "all is well" when everything hurts; it says "even here, you are there, and I thank you". Jesus told Gabrielle Bossis that our greatest gratitude would always fall short of his suffering love:
"Never will you put into your gratitude as much love and joy as I put love and joy into suffering to save you." — Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, He and I (Lui et moi): Spiritual Conversations[25]
Looking at the Cross is here the sovereign antidote to ingratitude: before such a gift, complaint falls silent. That is why the saints, far from fleeing suffering, knew how to find matter for thanks in it — not from masochism, but because they recognized in it the seal of a love that gave itself to the very end.
Thanking Even for Our Own Weaknesses
More surprising still: mature gratitude knows how to thank God for its own limits and humiliations, because they keep us in humility. Mother Yvonne-Aimée of Malestroit made it a rule:
"If I were humble, I would never cease thanking God instead of sometimes grieving over those sorts of faults or defects which are not offenses against God, but good matter for being humbled before others." — Mother Yvonne-Aimée of Malestroit, Spiritual Writings (Écrits spirituels)[26]
This is Saint Thérèse's "little way" applied to gratitude: thanking God for our very poverty, because it draws mercy. The soul that knows how to give thanks for its weaknesses has conquered pride's last fortress.
Not Waiting to "Feel" Before Giving Thanks
In trial, the feeling of gratitude often disappears. That is normal, and it does not matter. Dryness does not prevent thanksgiving, because gratitude lies in the will, not in emotion. A "thank you" said in the night, feeling nothing, is worth more than an easy transport: it is pure, because it seeks not consolation, but God's honor alone. The gratitude that holds without feeling anything is the highest, because it is the most disinterested.
Pitfalls to Avoid in Seeking Gratitude
Grumbling and Habitual Complaint
The daily enemy of gratitude is not open revolt: it is grumbling — that background complaint, half-voiced, which always finds something to fault. The people of Israel in the desert are its figure: fed with manna, they grumble still[27]. Grumbling is the exact opposite of thanksgiving: it looks at what is lacking instead of what is given. Fighting it is concrete work: each time we catch ourselves complaining, turning the complaint around into thanks for what we still have.
Self-Interested Gratitude
A subtler pitfall: thanking God in order to obtain more, as one flatters a powerful man. This mercenary gratitude (do ut des, "I give so that you may give") is not yet the virtue: it always looks at the gift, never at the Giver. True gratitude gives thanks even when it expects nothing more, and blesses God for himself. The sign that we have moved past self-interest is that we give thanks also when we receive nothing.
Taking Gifts for Dues
The most insidious pitfall is habituation. The greatest gifts — health, sight, loved ones, faith, forgiveness — are precisely those we notice least, because they have been there forever. We thank only for what surprises us; yet nothing should go less without saying than existing and being loved by God. The remedy is to look at our goods as if we could lose them, or as if we had just received them: gratitude is reborn as soon as we stop taking things for granted.
The Fruits of a Growing Gratitude
Joy
The first fruit of gratitude is joy — not euphoria, but that deep joy which does not depend on circumstances. It is no accident that Saint Paul binds the three in one breath: "Rejoice always […] give thanks in all circumstances"[28]. Joy is the natural color of a grateful heart, because it ever looks at what is given to it. Conversely, habitual sadness is often an ingratitude unaware of itself: it sees only what is lacking.
Trust and Peace
Gratitude begets trust. Whoever remembers all that God has already done worries less about the future: grateful memory of the past is the best foundation of hope. This is the logic of the psalms, which recall ancient blessings to ground present trust. The peace of Saint Teresa of Avila — "Let nothing disturb you […] God alone suffices"[29] — is born of this grateful certainty: he who has given me so much will not abandon me (see How to Grow in Hope).
The Heart Dilated for Eternal Praise
The last fruit overflows time. Gratitude is the only spiritual attitude that will not cease in Heaven: faith will yield to vision, hope to possession, but the thanksgiving of the elect will last forever, for the blessed spend eternity giving thanks. Learning to thank already now is therefore beginning Heaven: entering already in this life into the eternal Sanctus of which Elizabeth of the Trinity speaks.
"Let us begin Heaven. Love Me unceasingly while I love you." — Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, He and I (Lui et moi): Spiritual Conversations[30]
It is the one spiritual exercise of which we shall never lose the use.
Gratitude in the Divine Will
The spirituality of the Divine Will, transmitted by Luisa Piccarreta, carries this logic of thanksgiving to its summit. The soul living in the divine Will is not content with thanking for its own blessings: it wills to give thanks with the very heart of God, uniting itself to the perfect thanksgiving Jesus renders to the Father, to supply for the ingratitude of all men. This is the very movement of "reparation": where countless gifts of God remain without thanks, the soul makes itself recognition for the ungrateful.
This reparative gratitude joins the most fundamental combat of the spiritual life. Jesus, in the Book of Heaven, designates proud ingratitude as the supreme affront[31]; conversely, the creature who "returns love for Love" and thanks for every gift repairs that affront and enters into the intimacy of the Creator. Thus the humblest of virtues — saying thank you — becomes, in the Divine Will, a participation in the eternal praise of the Trinity (see The Divine Will).
Mary, the Most Grateful of Creatures
No creature gave thanks like Mary. Her song, the Magnificat, is the accomplished model of Christian gratitude: it does not linger on the gifts received to glory in them, but rises at once to the Giver — "The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name!" The humble servant recognizes everything as gift ("He has looked upon his humble servant"), and from this recognition springs praise. Mary thus unites the three movements: recognition of the gift, thanksgiving, praise of the Giver for himself.
Putting ourselves at Mary's school means learning this gratitude which never stops at the gift, to rise always to the Love that gives. Whoever prays the Magnificat with her, day after day, slowly sees his own heart formed to recognition.
A Concrete Path, Day After Day
Growing in gratitude calls for no grand methods: it calls for constancy in small acts. Thanking on waking for the day received; living Mass and Communion as the thanksgiving they are; naming each evening three blessings of the day; turning every complaint around into thanks; giving thanks in trial without waiting to feel it; borrowing the words of the psalms and the Magnificat; saying thank you, truly, to men. These acts, repeated, hollow out the habit until the soul becomes, in Elizabeth of the Trinity's words, "a being always in thanksgiving".
It is the one virtue of which we can say it already begins Heaven: whoever learns to thank here below only inaugurates the eternal "thank you" of the blessed. "Give thanks in all circumstances: this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus."
To Go Further
- How to Grow in Charity — the virtue into which gratitude pours itself: whoever has received everything gives freely.
- How to Grow in Humility — the root of all gratitude: only the humble recognize that everything is gift.
- How to Grow in Trust and How to Grow in Surrender to God — anticipated gratitude, which thanks in advance.
- How to Grow in Hope — grateful memory of the past as the foundation of hope.
- How to Grow in Eucharistic Adoration — thanksgiving lived before the Blessed Sacrament.
Notes and References
First Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians 5:16-18, official liturgical translation. Founding triad: joy, prayer, thanksgiving, presented as "the will of God".
1 28Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians 5:20, official liturgical translation. Thanksgiving "at all times and for everything" as the mark of life in the Spirit.
2Letter of Saint Paul to the Colossians 3:17, official liturgical translation. Every Christian act is to be accomplished "giving thanks to God the Father through him".
3Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), letter to Simão Rodrigues, Rome, 18 March 1542: "Ingratitude is the most abominable of sins […] the forgetting of graces, blessings, and gifts received, and, as such, the cause, the beginning, and the origin of all sins and of all evils." Text preserved in the Ignatian correspondence (cf. Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Georgetown / Woodstock).
4Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), The Book of Heaven (Le Livre du Ciel), volume 1, Résiac editions, 2015, p. 21. Pride — brother of ingratitude — is designated as "the most terrible ingratitude toward God".
5 31Gospel according to Saint Luke 17:15-16, official liturgical translation. The healing of the ten lepers; only the Samaritan comes back to give thanks.
6Gospel according to Saint Luke 17:17-19, official liturgical translation. "Were not all ten made clean? Where are the other nine? […] Stand up and go: your faith has saved you."
7Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 106 (De gratitudine — gratitude) and q. 107 (ingratitude). Gratitude is treated there as an "annexed" virtue of justice: rendering to the benefactor the honor due to him.
8Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2637: "Thanksgiving characterizes the prayer of the Church which, in celebrating the Eucharist, manifests and becomes more fully what she is."
9Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2639. Distinction between thanksgiving (for what God does) and praise (for what he is).
10Saint Anthony the Great (c. 251-356), Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers (Philocalie des Pères neptiques), Cerf editions, 2019, volume A1, no. 2, p. 44. Comparison of the trials of providence to the physician's bitter remedies: refusing God gratitude in hardship would be as absurd as refusing to thank the physician for an unpleasant remedy.
11Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 224, subsection "Living in 'thanksgiving'". Official English edition.
12First Letter to the Corinthians 4:7, official liturgical translation: "What have you that you did not receive?" — scriptural foundation of gratitude as recognition of gift.
13Gospel according to Saint Matthew 10:8, official liturgical translation: "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give" — gratuity received calls for gratuity given.
14Book of Job 1:21, official liturgical translation. Thanksgiving of Job stripped of everything: "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord!"
15Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians 1:12, official liturgical translation: being "to the praise of his glory" (in laudem gloriae eius). The expression of which Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity made the program of her whole spiritual life.
16Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906), Carmelite of Dijon, Complete Works (Œuvres complètes), Cerf editions, 1979-1980, p. 126. Taking up the Pauline expression laudem gloriae (Eph 1:12): the soul become a "praise of glory" is "always in thanksgiving".
17Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, no. 43: the daily examen begins with "giving thanks to God our Lord for the blessings received".
18Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1328. The name "Eucharist" comes from the Greek eucharistein (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24) and eulogein, which refer back to the Jewish blessings (berakah) proclaiming the works of God.
19Saint John Mary Vianney (1786-1859), the holy Curé of Ars, Pensées (Thoughts), Artège editions, 2015, p. 18. Miserliness of heart toward a God "lavish" to the point of the Cross and the Eucharist is denounced as ingratitude.
20Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis (1874-1950), He and I (Lui et moi): Spiritual Conversations (Entretiens spirituels), Beauchesne, vol. 1, 1948, no. 240, p. 67. Widely circulated approved writings. Giving thanks in the morning for the day received.
21Psalm 136 (135):1, official liturgical translation: "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever." Refrain of the "great Hallel", the very type of the psalm of thanksgiving.
22Gospel according to Saint Luke 1:46-49 (the Magnificat), official liturgical translation. Mary's canticle at the Visitation, daily prayer of the Church at Vespers; the accomplished model of thanksgiving.
23Gospel according to Saint John 11:41, official liturgical translation. At the tomb of Lazarus, Christ gives thanks before the miracle: "Father, I thank you for hearing me." Foundation of anticipated gratitude.
24Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, He and I (Lui et moi): Spiritual Conversations (Entretiens spirituels), Beauchesne, vol. 1, 1948, no. 60, p. 36. Our gratitude will always fall short of the suffering love of Christ.
25Mother Yvonne-Aimée of Malestroit (1901-1951), Augustinian, Spiritual Writings (Écrits spirituels), François-Xavier de Guibert editions, 2011, p. 96. Thanking God for our own non-culpable defects, as matter for humility.
26Book of Numbers 11:1-6, official liturgical translation. The grumblings of Israel in the desert, fed with manna yet longing for Egypt: the biblical figure of habitual ingratitude.
27Saint Teresa of Jesus (of Avila) (1515-1582), poem "Nada te turbe", quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 227: "Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you: all things pass, God does not change; patience obtains all; whoever possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices."
29Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, He and I (Lui et moi): Spiritual Conversations (Entretiens spirituels), Beauchesne, vol. 1, 1948, no. 14, p. 29: "Let us begin Heaven. Love Me unceasingly while I love you."
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