Thanksgiving is one of the most popular of the civil holidays and a highpoint of the autumn season. The celebration began in the gratitude of early immigrants for their new home and its opportunity for a new life; it was fused into our national culture in the trials of the two wars which formed our nation, the Revolution and the War Between the States. In the century and more since, it has become an occasion for gathering family and friends, and its centerpiece now is a sumptuous meal. Still, unlike so many other secular holidays, Thanksgiving has not lost its main purpose: to remind us of the bounteous blessings bestowed on us and to give thanks for them.
Giving thanks is certainly a Christian activity as well. The Scriptures and the Church Fathers impress upon us the need for thankfulness as a vital part of our spiritual life. The Church’s worship centers on the Holy Mystery of Communion, which is also called the Eucharist, a word which means “Thanksgiving”. Thus we mark each Sunday of the year and each of the Church’s great festivals with a “Thanksgiving Dinner,” the Mystical Supper of our Lord’s precious Body and Blood. Expressions of gratitude recur constantly throughout the Liturgy. By celebrating the weekly Day of Resurrection and the feasts which commemorate events of His earthly career in this manner, through a service whose main theme is thanksgiving, we acknowledge what our Savior has done for us in His incarnation, death and Resurrection, and we express our abiding gratitude for His saving love.
The theme of thanksgiving appears very early in the Divine Liturgy, in the First Antiphon. Here we sing verses from Psalm 103, which opens by recalling the blessings for which we owe gratitude. “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy (vss. 1-4). In these lines we hear echoed the elements of true thanksgiving.
We give thanks to God, in the first place, both because of what He has done for us and for the sake of His name – in other words, because of who He is. The two are related. God bestows His blessings upon us because He is Love Itself and, therefore, seeks to share His goodness with us. Thus we give thanks both for the things He has done for us, and also for His love which leads Him to bestow these benefits. Our thankfulness acknowledges both His glory and His benevolence, both His divine lordship and His saving love.
The Psalm then enumerates His blessings. So often when we give thanks, we think first of material bounty or of the pleasures of life. The Psalmist, however, concentrates on the spiritual gifts which are the basis of true, eternal happiness. He sings of forgiveness, of healing, of redemption and of “crowning” with love and mercy. These all apply to His care for us individually and to the salvation bestowed on the whole human race in Christ, the divine incarnate Word. We all require forgiveness and redemption both from earthly perils and from the eternal condemnation which our sins warrant. We need healing of all our infirmities, whether physical or spiritual, and the renewal of our fallen humanity through the outpouring of His love and mercy. God’s blessings permeate every particle of our being. Therefore, we must express our gratitude to Him, not in part or haphazardly, but with our whole being. “All that is within” us must “bless His holy name.”
Thus, being thankful is not just an attitude or an activity, it is a virtue. It is a positive action, a good work. As such, it draws other virtues to itself. When we recall God’s blessings and reach up toward Him in thanksgiving, our love is responding to His love. We draw closer to Him and partake more deeply of His transfiguring grace. “A heart that is continually moved to thanksgiving is a guide that leads the gifts of God to a man …. A mouth that always renders thanks receives a blessing from God, and grace descends into the heart that perseveres in thanksgiving” (St Isaac of Nineveh). As St Peter of Damascus notes, gratitude is a natural thing but it draws to us gifts which are beyond nature. Chief of these is humility. The very act of thanksgiving is an acknowledgment that we owe our material and spiritual well-being, not to our own character or attainments, but to our Creator and Savior. We are thus taught and encouraged in humility. “You should continually and unceasingly call to mind all the blessings which God in His love has bestowed upon you in the past, and still bestows for the salvation of your soul …. For this kind of continual recollection, pricking the heart like a spur, moves it constantly to confession and humility, to thanksgiving with a contrite soul, and to all forms of sincere effort” (St Mark the Ascetic).
If thankfulness is a virtue then, by the same token, ingratitude is a vice. It is not simply the absence of thankfulness. It is truly a sinful disposition of the heart, one whose corrupting influence extends far beyond the immediate circumstances. St Isaac contrasts the heart that is full of gratitude with the ungrateful one. The latter falls prey to chronic discontent, “a murmuring disposition.” The heart does not remain empty. Either it will be aware of its debt to its Creator and Redeemer and thus grow in humility, virtue and wisdom, or it will be always discontented, restless within itself and scornful of others. Such a soul draws afflictions to itself, for “a murmuring disposition always active in the heart is a guide that leads trials to the soul” (St Isaac).
Above all, the ungrateful heart becomes the victim of pride. The virtues wither in the face of pride, like tender plants in a blistering sun. “The righteous man who has no consciousness of his own weakness walks on a razor’s edge, and is never far from falling, nor from the ravening lion – I mean the demon of pride” (St Isaac of Nineveh). Pride blinds us to our own sins and sharpens our disdain for the sins of others. We fall into a false thanksgiving, what St Peter of Damascus calls, “the gratitude of the Pharisee, who condemned others and justified himself” (Luke 18: 10-4). Such an attitude is far from true thanksgiving offered to God for His mercy and blessings. Rather, it is a phony “gratitude” offered to ourselves by ourselves for ourselves, as if we were the source of our own righteousness. It is a delusion based on a deception, and it destroys the very virtues in which we take pride.
St Paul exhorts us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (I Thessalonians 5: 18). The Fathers note that this means even for things that appear to be misfortunes and afflictions, at least in worldly terms. St John Chrysostom admonishes us, “If you give thanks when you are in comfort and in affluence, in success and in prosperity, there is nothing great, nothing wonderful in that. What is required is for a man to give thanks when he is in affliction, in anguish, in discouragements. Utter no word in preference to this, ‘Lord, I thank Thee.’”
St John reminds us that we often make spiritual progress only when faced with challenges and adversities; the easy life often leads to sloth, complacency and neglect. St Gregory of Nazianzus echoes St John, pointing out that even things that are painful “are often instruments of our salvation.” Chrysostom invokes the example of the prophet Job, whose faith grew and deepened because he confronted afflictions in firm reliance upon divine mercy. With the words of the prophet Isaiah, St John recalls God’s promise that He will always be with us to strengthen and encourage us: “Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget thee, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 49: 15). He sums up with this exhortation: “Let us therefore give thanks not only for blessings which we see, but also for those which we see not, and for those which we receive against our will. For many are the blessings He bestows upon us, without our desire, without our knowledge …. Let us not then give thanks only when we are in prosperity, for there is nothing great in this …. but whenever we are either in penury, or in sicknesses, or in disasters, then let us increase our thanksgiving; thanksgiving, I mean, not in words, nor in tongue, but in deeds and works, in mind and in heart. Let us give thanks unto Him with all our souls.”
St John echoes the words of Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!” Thanksgiving opens our hearts to God’s righteousness and mercy. It also reminds us that we are called to share in that righteousness and to reflect His mercy in our lives in humility and faith. As we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinner, let us remember the deeper spiritual dimensions of giving thanks, and thus, along with the turkey and trimmings, let us partake also of a spiritual feast of grace and love.
***
