All Good Things Come From Above
When we pray, what do we say? We have a very strong tendency to reduce prayer simply to asking for things we’d like to have—to find things we’ve lost, to be able to pay the bills, for good health, and so on. But it would be wrong to confine the notion of prayer to just asking for things. There are other aspects to prayer that we should also be familiar with and incorporate into our communications with God. Prayer falls into four categories: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. It’s easy to remember—just take the four initial letters, A.C.T. and S., and they spell out ACTS. The “Supplication” part is where we ask for things, but the other three are equally, if not more important.
Take “Thanksgiving” for example. When we say the word “Thanksgiving”, what comes into our minds? If we’re seeing visions of turkey dinners and the Macy’s Day Parade in New York, then we’ve missed the point. It’s supposed to be a day set aside to give thanks to God for all the good things he has given us. However, Thanksgiving is not a Catholic holiday—it was invented by those most anti-Catholic of Protestants, the Puritans of New England. Perhaps because of this association, Catholics generally don’t consider Thanksgiving Day from a spiritual perspective, and there are no official novenas, vigils, Masses or special prayers reserved for this holiday.
This lack of approved devotions should not prevent us from giving thanks to God on this federal holiday. But in addition, we should be on the lookout, not just on this one day in November, but throughout all twelve months, for opportunities to say “thank you” to the good Lord who has given us so very much.
Today’s Epistle provides just such an opportunity, in its reminder that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” We must realize and acknowledge that every good gift we have been given comes to us from God. Everything—from the air we breathe to the people we love—they all form part of that torrent of good things showered upon us by our loving Father in heaven. And once we acknowledge this fact, it becomes our fond duty to show our gratitude.
We do so first of all by simply saying “thank you God” Deo gratias. We thank God for providing us with all those good gifts. It’s unthinkable to us that these gifts should come from any other source than God himself. We should never take them for granted, and we should certainly never attribute them to natural resources or our own talents. No matter what role Nature or Personal Aptitude may have played, any gift can and must be traced back to the Almighty Creator of all. If nature has endowed us with good weather this morning, or good health for our children, who created Nature in the first place? If we have accomplished some goal through our own efforts, who was it that implanted those skills in us or the perseverance to get it done? Every good gift, every perfect gift is from above!
The second thing we must do after thanking God in words is to thank God by our actions. We must serve God, showing our gratitude by our loyalty, by our obedience to his laws, by our subjection to his will. Without this confirmation of our appreciation for every good thing we have, how rude and ungrateful would we be? Any consideration of the many benefits we enjoy should automatically inspire us to serve God and show our appreciation by unwavering loyalty.
We hardly need to go through the list of everything that came to us from God. However, we might find it helpful to categorize all those good things in some kind of priority. This way, we can try and give our most heartfelt thanks for the things that matter most.
Top of the list, surely, must be the state of sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is the one thing that makes the difference between our salvation and our damnation, and there can be no greater concern in our lives than ensuring we are at all times prepared to die in this state of grace. Nothing else rises to this level of importance, nothing should bring us more quickly to our knees to give thanks to the Lord our God. Was it not by sending his Son to dwell amongst us, to die amongst us, that this grace is made available to us? His suffering Body is witness to the high price he paid so that we might find salvation. If we’re not in the state of grace, we must do everything possible to attain it. And once we have it, we should guard it as our most prized possession, giving thanks constantly to the good Lord who died so we might have it.
Next on the long list of good and perfect gifts must be the means by which this grace reaches us, namely the Mass and the Sacraments. Baptism removes the stain of original sin and receives us into the state of grace for the first time. But this state of grace can be lost in the twinkling of an eye, in any one of the many moments of weakness that attack us on a regular basis. Without the sacrament of Penance, we would have no guarantee of forgiveness, no sacramental absolution to restore our souls to its pristine state. Without the Holy Eucharist, we would be deprived of our greatest source of grace and the strength, protection and sustenance that this Blessed Sacrament gives us. The other sacraments all have their place in ensuring that sanctifying grace remains in our soul in whatever walk of life we’ve chosen, whatever trials befall us. So let’s give thanks for all seven of them, each one lovingly instituted by our blessed Lord during his life here on earth as our means to salvation.
We should be thankful too for the gift of his blessed Mother. He gave her to be our Mother just before he died, and without her maternal help in our lives, how could we even survive? She intercedes constantly for us, her children, both now and most especially at the hour of our death. How many souls would have been lost without her loving prayers on our behalf? So give thanks to God for her care and assistance, as well as for all those other saints in heaven who pray for us.
The very Church herself provides us with yet another incentive for gratitude. Where else can we find the truths revealed by God to be taught infallibly and passed down from generation to generation? Without the Church we would be orphans, floundering to come up with our own personal interpretations of Scripture, changing our opinions on dogma according to the whims of the times we live in. Even today, when those who govern our Church have betrayed her fundamental principles, we should still be grateful to God that he has delivered her from evil in the past and will, in some way, continue to do so into the future, no matter how many within the Church might try to destroy her.
I’ll leave it to you to prioritize all the other things we have to be thankful for. The air we breathe, the homes we live in, the family and friends we love and rely on, whatever good health we have managed to preserve, our jobs, our bank accounts, our possessions—the list is endless and different for us all. But don’t worry, we’ll never run out of things to thank God for, and if we realize the depth of our riches, spiritual and temporal, we should hardly dare to ever ask God for anything more. And yet, God wants us to ask for more, and next week we’ll have that opportunity. Next Sunday marks the beginning of Rogationtide, and we’ll be offering up our litanies of supplication for all our daily needs. But that’s next week. Today, before we ask God to give us more good and needful things, let’s first thank him for what he has given us already. Remember, happiness doesn’t come from getting everything we want, but rather in enjoying what we already have. So let’s give thanks to the Father of lights who has seen fit to provide us with so much.