Благодарение Бога

Due to the significant spiritual benefit that thanksgiving to God brings to a person, God commanded us to carefully practice thanking Him, to cultivate in ourselves a feeling of gratitude to God. Give thanks in everything, says the apostle; he declares: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you (1 Thess. 5:18). The holy apostle, having said that the will of God proclaimed by him about thanksgiving for everything is the will of God in Christ Jesus, expressed the following: “The New Testament commandment of thanksgiving is mysterious, spiritual, Divine; it flows from the sacrament of the incarnation of Christ and is based on this sacrament.” The God-man spent His earthly life in hardships and sorrows. By this He sanctified the hardships and sorrows of those who truly believe in Him, and elevated earthly hardships and sorrows above earthly prosperity. He did not take part in the latter. The commandment of thanksgiving is alien to carnal wisdom: it is understood only by the spiritual mind, it is performed in the light of the spiritual mind. Carnal wisdom, if it ever gives thanks, then thanks only for material benefits; when tempted, it becomes confused, it grumbles and blasphemes; God's commandment commands thanksgiving for everything, even for sorrows. She commands thanksgiving for sorrows as for a part of Christ, she commands thanksgiving for prosperity and well-being as for God’s condescension to our weakness. “Jesus, in order to sanctify people with His blood, suffered outside the gates. Let us therefore go out to Him outside the camp,” outside the custom of this world, “bearing His reproach; for we do not have a permanent city here, but we are looking for the future” (Heb. 13:12-14). “It has been given to you for Christ’s sake not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him” (Phil. 1:29). The gift will naturally be followed by thanksgiving. If sorrows for Christ are a gift of God, given by God to a true Christian, then a Christian is obliged to experimentally prove his Christianity with thanksgiving for sorrows, must confess and accept the gift of God with thanksgiving for the gift. Through thanksgiving, faith is strengthened, the deep mysteries of Christianity are revealed, an extensive and clear knowledge of God is introduced into the soul through the action of grace-filled peace and spiritual consolation, which are an indispensable consequence of thanksgiving... Faith teaches us that everything that happens to us is done according to the all-good and wise Providence of God for our essential benefit. 15 Faith thus leads to thanksgiving to God, and thanksgiving strengthens faith. According to the conviction of the mind, we begin to give thanks; thanksgiving arouses the conviction of the heart. A vast field of thanksgiving and glorification opens up before a Christian who leads a pious life according to the commandments of the Gospel, who does not allow himself to be blinded by vain passions and concerns, and who constantly looks to the haven of eternity. Everything temporary passes as usual. The future becomes the present, the present becomes the past. All the past has passed and will not return, all the future will come for the shortest possible time in order to become past. Only one who spends his earthly life as a wanderer according to his way of thinking, according to his heartfelt feeling, according to the activity flowing from them, can constantly glorify and thank God. The Christian comes to bewilderment before the greatness of God’s goodness, contemplated in the incarnation of God the Word and in the salvation of men wrought by Him. Contemplation of this awakens abundant praise and thanksgiving to God; This contemplation kindles a fiery zeal for living according to the commandments of the Gospel, for following Christ along the narrow and sorrowful path. When a Christian takes the narrow path, then he sees the disastrous deception that dominates the wide path. When he tastes the spiritual consolation that the Savior feeds those walking along the sorrowful path, just as He fed the Israelites with manna in the desert, then he will abhor the carnal and sinful pleasure that so abounds in Egypt. Ineffable praise and thanksgiving to God embraces the Christian amid his hardships and sorrows, with which God’s Providence removes him from sympathy and enslavement to sin, by which he is included in the host of Christ’s followers. Man did not raise such voices of praise to God for his earthly prosperity as were raised by the holy martyrs for the torture and execution to which they were subjected, with which God granted them to seal the confession of Christ and enter into the closest union with Christ. Such praise and thanksgiving to God were not heard from the magnificent palaces, from the midst of luxurious feasts, which were heard from the wretched huts of the monks, from the midst of their deprivations and sorrows, which were heard at the meals of the fasters, who ate their meager bread to strengthen the body in serving the soul, protected from satiety, which enslaves the soul to the body. God is forgotten by man, His good deeds are forgotten, the great work of redemption is closed, like a thick curtain, by carnal wisdom and carnal life; All this is revealed to him who crucified “the flesh with its passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24). From the cross we are capable of confessing and praising God; in earthly prosperity we are capable of rejecting Him. Brethren! Let us cultivate the invisible feat of thanksgiving to God. This feat will remind us of the God we have forgotten, this feat will reveal to us the greatness of God that has been hidden from us, will reveal His ineffable and innumerable benefits to people in general and to each person in particular, this feat will instill in us a living faith in God, this feat will give us a God who is not with us, who was taken from us by our coldness towards Him, our inattention. Evil thoughts defile and destroy a person (see Matt. 15:19), holy thoughts sanctify and give life to him. “Wrong thinking alienates one from God” (Wisdom 1:3), holy thoughts lead to Him. From them are born words and deeds pleasing to God. This Christian view of himself is completely different from so-called optimism, or the doctrine that everything in the world is going for the better. Contrary to this teaching, Holy Scripture affirms that all good things gradually fade away. You might be interested in: