From the Abbot
Giving Thanks
I recently visited Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo., where a confrere was completing his summer pastoral experience. This gave me the opportunity to meet with his supervisors and “shadow” my confrere to understand his experience there. As I stood outside one patient’s room while this confrere was with her – a woman who had been in intensive care for a month – the patient’s husband came out to talk with me. He wanted to express his gratitude for all that this monk had done for them. He said he wanted to share his deep appreciation for the care he and his wife received in their faith. Gratitude is the heart of our faith. It is the first step in our relationship with God. It is the font of the Eucharist and should be the font of all our prayer. When we sit down to pray, the first thing we should do is spend some moments thanking God. “Thank you, Lord, for my life, for my community, for the family that nurtured me, for the confrere who shared of himself, for the opportunity to spend myself, for all the gifts of creation and for your Son Jesus who has saved me.” There is no greater virtue that will create a stronger bond between others and our relationship with God than this virtue of gratitude. Our whole day is filled with acts of service and favors from those around us. It costs us very little to show our gratitude and it does so much good toward creating a stable and tranquil atmosphere, improving relationships, and making our own charity easier to practice. The root of this virtue is our own gratitude toward God. Fundamentally, cultivating the spirit of gratitude requires of us a deep humility. We need to understand that everything we have and everything we are is a gift. And this begins with the very gift of life. When we stop and think about all for which we should be grateful, it can be overwhelming, but how can we not be in awe of all that we have been given, and how can we not be grateful? This is the sense that St. Benedict is trying to instill in us as he reminds us to offer prayer before every good work. Opening up all that we do to the grace of God, that he might bless our endeavors, so as to provide us with a sense of gratitude for his work in our lives.
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Kansas Monks
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