“Now we make offering to Him, not as though He stood in need of it, but rendering thanks for His gift, and thus sanctifying what has been created.” — Irenaeus of Lyons

If thanks is something to be given, it follows that it must be received. Nebulous sentimentality and mindfulness of the cosmos do not, contrary to popular belief, amount to gratitude any more than parasocial admiration is the sum of friendship. Giving is the fundament of love, therefore to give thanks is an essentially loving act, and love is necessarily an activity premised on mutuality. It is given that the subject of love is always personal, but if the object of love is not likewise personal, even the most saccharine and ebullient affection is reduced to something impotent and pathetic. Ergo, thanks given to something that cannot receive it is wasted, like obeisance and sacrifice to a mute, dumb, blind idol.

Left at the mercy of this fact alone, thanksgiving would still be left suspended in midair, halfway to heaven, stifled by confusion and arbitrariness and unsure of its destination. Nevertheless, it is further true that the proper object of gratitude is no more arbitrary than the source of those blessings which solicit it. The beginning and the end of love are the same One. 

All of this is very rudimentary, but it is precisely that which is at bottom which touches the most on what follows therefrom. That is to say that thankfulness’ bearing so directly on love bestows on it a highly privileged rank, adjacent to and entangled with the most substantial attribute of the revealed character of the Divine. As it belongs to the wider genus of love, thanksgiving is quite seriously an indispensable fixture of true and undefiled religion. Ingratitude, whether the lack of gratitude or lack of its proper object, is as severe an impediment to right relationship with God as any other sin. Why else should the central ritual of Christian worship be called as much: Eucharist, which is thanksgiving? The American civil holiday has its own merit as a historical and cultural heirloom, but its worth is merely derivative of the demonstrably greater value of its namesake. 

Divine Love is the very concourse of being itself, the root from which all that exists blossoms. In the white light of Love is contained the spectrum of God’s glorious energies reflected in their diverse hues in every corner of creation — that glory which God may well have been pleased to keep to His own eyes forever, but by His free grace instead deemed it good that other eyes should participate in its radiant life. It follows, then, that these other eyes, owing their existence to the light which first saw them into being, cannot by any source apart from their Source see all the rest of existence. The light of God does not simply uncover the world like the light of the sun, but by shining into the dark waters calls the earth into being. All that is to say that the Divine Love is at once the means by which men see and the cause of there being anything to see and eyes to see it. 

If faith could be described as the sight of the soul, the sense beneath the senses that perceives between material things and which alone disposes a spirit to receive the free gift of grace, then thanksgiving is the sight of the affections, illuminated by the light of Divine Love. The more one loves the Good, the more one is inclined to, and indeed cannot do other than, see all the subordinate goods in creation as aglow with the Love that called them good, and so love Him more for their expression of His character. Naturally, no worldly good can excel in divine participation the bearers of His very likeness, and so the love of mankind is rightly second only to the love of his Maker. 

Thanksgiving ought properly to suffuse one’s view of the world as universally as Love has brought the world into view, and brought one into the world to view it. Gratitude is meant to be so deeply engrained in perception that by it all is seen with the heart before it is seen with the eyes. It is a precondition of sight, a glaze which brings the shapes and colors of the world into such a focus as will invariably increase its own predisposition. That is, the love of God from the heart looks for itself in the world and, finding itself, grows. 

Thankfulness is the axiom on which this self-searching love turns, relating matter to mind according to the divine intention of each. It sanctifies self by transforming the desperate and self-defeating self-desire of the human heart into the manifestly victorious conquering love of God. It turns the human being inside-out, from incurvatus in se toward more total participation in her Origin, so that the love which engendered her also sustains. Being itself is rediscovered, recapitulated, revived in the restored flow of love from Source to source. Eucharistically, the “sacrifice of thanksgiving” is returned for the inimitable sacrifice of God’s own life. Love realizes itself through reciprocation, and participation in that love grants life.

Just as faith receives the saving grace of that sacrifice, thanksgiving receives the myriad graces that the first holds together, the grace which works all things for the good of those immersed in that free exchange of love. Yes, all things, even those are painful, burdensome, or otherwise have their blessedness veiled in the shabby garb of worldly woes. To human eyes, which relay only that which is physical and not spiritual, and even then with variable trustworthiness, all blessings in some sense are “disguised.” It is not always true that the goodness is truly obscured by something on or in itself. Often, blessings are disguised by the blindness of the eyes. Thanksgiving brings faith by the hand and introduces her to the bodily, physical self and teaches the latter by their conversation to uncover the eyes, exposing them to the goodness brimming throughout their Creator’s work. After all, the most thoroughly disguised blessing, the image of the perfect Adam accursed upon a tree, was also the most profound and obvious revelation. Light is blindness to sinful eyes, but faith can see what was clear all along.

Have a blessed and joyful Thanksgiving Day

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High. — Psalm 50:14 (RSV)

Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. — 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (RSV )