Gratitude is the state of mind of a person who recognises the abundance of the gifts bestowed by God, His endless care 1 but, above all, the possibility for a person to share in God, that is, to participate, through deification, in the divine life: ‘The one who had turned away from God,’ says Saint Cyril of Alexandria – and had grieved Him through disobedience and a multitude of sins, Christ has restored him once more before the Father, just as He is in Himself, and as he was in the beginning (ώς έν έαυτω καί πρώτω). For He entered heaven as our Forerunner, so that He might now appear before the face of God on our behalf, as the wise Paul writes (Hebrews 9:24). He who is ever with His Father is said to appear now, presenting the human nature as it is in Himself, and as it was in the beginning, before the Father, along with our own, and transforming the old state2”.
Thus, the Saviour has embraced humanity within His life 3 and has offered it the certain possibility of becoming divine, ‘for God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16), working with each person individually so that His life may be ever-present within us 4, just as He promised: ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’ (John 10:10) and ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). Eternal life, however, is not granted ‘as a debt owed by God for the deeds (of the righteous, n.n.), but is offered as a grace by God, the Great Giver, to those who have placed their hope in Him’5). Grace, which we receive freely from God—being the greatest gift we can receive as rational beings from God—helps us to recognise the nature of the gifts bestowed upon us all, through which God shows us His love and care. It is therefore fitting, says the Holy Apostle Paul, that we should ‘give thanks to God for His unspeakable gift’ (2 Corinthians 9:15).
That is why the Holy Sacrament through which we enter into union with the divine nature in the Person of the Saviour has been called nothing other than the Eucharist, ευχαριστία, that is to say, thanksgiving, gratitude, ‘because it is a remembrance of God’s many blessings towards us, because it reveals to us the summit of God’s providence, and because through all this it prepares us to give thanks to God’6 In the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, ‘the Saviour continually offers Himself up for us as a sacrifice to the Father, and together with Himself He brings our gifts—or, rather, He brings us ourselves with Him as living sacrifices, raising us to the height and joy of the Holy Trinity, where He ascended as a man through the Resurrection 7”, says Father Dumitru Stăniloae.
The Son of God became incarnate so that we, by partaking of His Body and Blood, might enter into a personal relationship with Him. He became a partaker of human nature so that we might become ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4). ‘To be a partaker of the divine nature does not mean to possess the divine nature. For to possess the divine nature is to possess it in oneself, by birth or proceeding from the Father. To share in it is to possess only the powers derived from it. In this sense, one bears fruit in the Spirit; that is to say, the Spirit produces His fruits in man, or the powers of the Spirit, uniting with man’s powers, cause these to bear not merely created fruits, but fruits which also possess divine qualities. Through this, man truly becomes like God, as he was in the beginning, revealing divine beauty within himself, or the quality of being a son of God by grace. He was thus made in the likeness of the Son of God, through union with Him. This status was restored to him by the Son, through His Incarnation, in that He first imprinted within Himself, as a human being, the status of Son of God, so that He might pass it on to those who are united with Him through faith’8
The Holy Eucharist unites us fully with Christ. It is the culmination and the goal of the sacramental life. Nichifor Crainic says of this moment that: “the Eucharistic food, obtained through the mysterious transubstantiation of the elements of created nature, is intended not to assimilate Christ to our nature, but to assimilate our nature to Christ. Through Holy Communion, we do not make Christ like us, but He makes us like Him, which means our transfiguration or deification’9”. Saint Gregory Palamas, faithful to his teaching on uncreated light, views the union of the believer with Christ in Holy Communion through light: ‘Through Holy Communion, Christ becomes one body with us and illuminates the souls of those who partake of the radiance of His Body, just as the bodies of the disciples shone on Mount Tabor. Then, however, the Body shone without uniting with their bodies, whereas now, since He has mingled with us and dwells within us, He illuminates our souls with His light from within us’10
That is why we are bound “to give thanks to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:57), not merely through a simple string of words11; for through our participation in the Divine Liturgy we are called to receive a foretaste of eternal life, since ‘Christ dwells within us, and we experience the mystery of His presence; from now on, we encounter Him within ourselves. The Son of God had to be immersed in human nature, to die and to rise again, so that we, by being immersedin the waters of Baptism, we might receive Him entirely within us—or rather, immerse ourselves entirely in His divine life, to partake of all the gifts with which His human nature was filled through His Passion and Resurrection”12
Gratitude is thus transformed into the person’s capacity to open themselves to free communion with Christ the Saviour, through the Holy Spirit, following the model of the communion of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Saviour Himself gave thanks to the Father: ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but I said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they might believe that You sent Me’ (John 11:1–42). Each Person of the Holy Trinity, by revealing Himself in the world and working in and amongst people, manifests perfect unity with the other two Persons through His very being and through His perfect love for Them. But, at the same time, He also bestows His love upon people, out of the love He has for the other Persons. Our love for one another is not perfect because the unity of being amongst us is not perfect either. We are called to grow in perfect love amongst ourselves and towards God, which is manifested and developed through a state of gratitude, springing from a state of communion. Saint Gregory Palamas considers that unceasing prayer is, in equal measure, an act of thanksgiving and a conscious communion between man and God. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, placing unceasing prayer at the summit of the virtues or on the level where they are all perfectly concentrated, shows how the virtues are steps towards union with God, a state which places man in a state of complete tranquillity and contentment. For, in prayer, the ‘spiritual’ man is united with God. The ladder of virtues leads to union with God, which is experienced eternally in the state of prayer. The mountain of virtues is prayer, or God known in the state of prayer filled with love’13
We are called to grow in perfect love amongst ourselves and towards God, which is manifested and developed through a state of gratitude, springing from a state of communion.
God desires that man should grow spiritually, and “this growth is not achieved without his own effort to preserve grace and to acquire an ever firmer habit of ever greater goodness”14. By healing the ten lepers, Christ the Saviour calls them not merely to resume their daily lives in the bodily health which God had granted them before they contracted leprosy, but to a new state, which, in time, could become entirely useful for deepening their communion; yet only ‘one of them, seeing that he had been healed, returned, praising God with a loud voice. And he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving thanks to Him. And that man was a Samaritan. And Jesus replied, ‘Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?’” (Luke 17:15–17). In his interpretation of this Gospel passage, Saint Gregory Palamas understands leprosy as the very state of the fall of human nature, from which “having been cleansed by Christ from that first curse, which was for us like leprosy and yet more dishonourable and more defiled than any leprosy, He has removed the passion from the soul and beyond the body. Thus, having been cleansed of leprosy through Christ and immediately receiving through Him the purity which our nature possessed from the beginning, we do not cleave to Him through a virtuous life, but once again, through wicked and lawless deeds, we turn away from Him, as David says: ‘The lawbreakers shall not stand in Your sight’ (Psalm V, 5). Therefore, once more the Saviour, having shown such great mercy to them—and to those who came after them, that is to say, to us, who are like them—as though He were grieved for us, just as He said to Adam when he fell from that divine glory: ‘Adam, where are you?’ (Genesis 3:9), so too to these later ones: ‘But the rest of us, where are we?’”15 God’s cry, His call, does not seek moral satisfaction following healing, but reveals God’s great love for mankind, whom He wished to bring into communion with Himself.
St John Chrysostom says that “the God of the universe, after His countless and unspeakable blessings, asks nothing else of man but a grateful soul, one that knows how to thank Him for the blessings received”16. God had also asked for gratitude from those who had previously been lepers, not because He needed people’s thanks, but so that man might remain as long as possible in a state of communion, purify himself inwardly and free himself from passions, so that grace might dwell ever more deeply within him, transforming them from within or enlightening their conscience to the same extent as their mind, which will then be able to perceive Christ through all creation. ‘Yet these ten lepers are like the whole human race,’ emphasises Saint Gregory Palamas. For we are all lepers, since we have all fallen through sin, as the divine Paul says, for ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace’ (Romans 3:24). Therefore, all of us are lepers. But when the Lord came down from heaven and took on our nature, He freed it from the condemnation of sin. Yet those who belonged to His own people proved ungrateful for such a blessing, whilst those from the Gentiles who turned away from their vain ways and their old habits, bore witness not only to salvation, proclaiming the great mercy of Him Who emptied Himself for our sake, pouring out upon us the abundance of His ineffable love for mankind, but also by being faithful to His commandments. By celebrating in accordance with their example, through this celebration we attain peace—that is, by making peace with ourselves and with God, by doing what is pleasing to Him, by becoming wiser, by bearing witness, and by practising all righteousness’17 By maintaining an unbreakable communion with God, man remains a stranger to sin. The Holy Apostle Paul shows us, moreover, that gratitude becomes the Christian’s response to God’s grace poured out upon him: ‘I always give thanks to my God for you, for the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus’ – he tells the Christians in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:4).
God had also demanded gratitude from those who had previously been lepers, not because He needed people’s thanks, but so that man might remain as long as possible in a state of communion, purify himself inwardly and free himself from passions, so that grace might dwell ever more deeply within him, transforming them from within or enlightening their conscience to the same extent as their mind, which will then be able to perceive Christ in all creation.
And to the Philippians, the Apostle to the Gentiles addressed the exhortation: ‘In everything, through worship and prayer with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4:6–7). The prayer of thanksgiving thus strengthens and enlightens the soul: ‘I always give thanks to my God for you, for the grace of God bestowed upon you in Christ Jesus. For in Him you have been enriched in every way, in all speech and in all knowledge. Thus, the testimony of Christ has been strengthened in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, whilst awaiting the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:4–7). The prayer of thanksgiving must be offered unceasingly 18 not to persuade God to grant any particular request, but to affirm that man is turning back to God and wishes to remain unceasingly close to Him, so as to be His and to share in His gifts 19 and “once they have dedicated themselves to God through this communion, they easily cast off the burden of evil passions and gather the treasure of love”20. Saint Gregory of Sinai also shows that ‘prayer kindles the soul towards the boundless love of God and of mankind’21, since personal communion involves a relationship between persons, and this must certainly be a permanent one, which cannot exclude man’s continual gratitude for all the blessings bestowed by God.
The prayer of thanksgiving must be offered unceasingly, not to persuade God to grant any particular request, but to affirm that man turns to God and wishes to remain constantly close to Him, so as to be His and to share in His gifts…
The divine Paul teaches us how we must truly give thanks to God: ‘And let the peace of Christ, to which you were called in one body, reign in your hearts; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. Sing to God in your hearts, giving thanks to Him, with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, and through Him give thanks to God the Father’ (Colossians 3:15–17). The more we give thanks to God—through prayer and by partaking of the Holy Eucharist—the more we share in God’s gifts; in this regard, Saint Isaac the Syrian tells us that: ‘the gratitude of the recipient compels the giver to offer greater gifts than before’22 On the other hand, those who have shown themselves to be ungrateful have turned away from God’s gifts, bringing endless suffering upon themselves.
When a person fails to express gratitude for the blessings received, they dehumanise themselves and become estranged from God and their fellow human beings: ‘He who does not acknowledge a favour, even if only with words, if nothing else is possible, shows himself to be a foolish man, an ungrateful person and a forgetful one. Anyone who does not remember the good done to them and does not show gratitude commits an unforgivable error, whether they are a person of standing or an insignificant one. If he is a man of standing and learning, he is at fault for failing to show gratitude for the favours received; if he is a simple man of modest means, he is at fault because he does not praise his benefactor to the best of his ability, not only the great but also the humble. For it is in the nature of things that superior men, who have amassed a true treasure in their minds, should reward their benefactors in proportion to their power and to the favours received. No less obliged are those who have gathered little; they must not be negligent or grow lazy in rewarding their benefactors, on the pretext that they cannot achieve anything worthy of their benefactors’ intentions. For the benefactor will not take note of their clumsy words, but of the sincerity with which they are spoken. For this reason, they will not be regarded as inferior to those who are great and eloquent in speech”23
Severed from the perspective of communion with God and with one’s fellow human beings, contentment is reduced to self-justification and self-sufficiency, a self-satisfaction that leads a person towards alienation from God and from their neighbour.
When severed from the perspective of communion with God and one’s fellow human beings, contentment is reduced to self-justification and self-sufficiency, a self-satisfaction that leads a person towards alienation from God and one’s neighbour.
What is needed is ‘the gathering of the mind, combined with piety and a piercing of the heart’24; since the worries, quests, burdens and tensions to which we are subjected daily seem to drive God out of our lives and, ultimately, out of society as a whole. Hence we recognise the ever more pressing need to ‘come to our senses’ and turn away from the secularist spirit, which is increasingly steeped in the works of the evil one, ‘daring’ to turn to God, just as He Himself has promised us: ‘And whatever you ask for in prayer, believing, you will receive’ (Matthew 21:22). ‘The inner man receives through prayer unspeakable words which it is impossible for a man to utter’ (2 Corinthians 12:4), and for this reason thanksgiving is ever present on his lips.
- 1
‘God could not love the sinful state of humankind, which is a state of enmity on their part towards Him. Christ, as a human being, by atoning through His sacrifice for the enmity of human nature towards God, thereby wins God’s love for that very nature. Or, to put it another way: by manifesting through sacrifice the will to give itself entirely to God, human nature is thereby restored from its diseased state. These are two inseparable aspects of sacrifice. A parent rejoices when a child returns to showing respect towards him, not because he thereby sees his honour restored, but because, through this respect which the child once again shows him, he sees the moral and even ontological foundations within the child’s being restored”, cf. Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. II, I.B.M.B.O.R. Publishers, Bucharest, 1997, p. 131.
- 2
Saint Cyril of Alexandria, De adoratione et cultu …, PG 68, 620C–621A, in PSB 38, p. 337.
- 3
‘So Christ gave His own body for the life of all, and through Him He causes life to dwell within us. And through Him life has dwelt within us once more, but how He has done this, I shall explain to the best of my ability. For the life-giving Word of God, having taken up residence in the body, transformed it into His own good, that is, into life, and revealed it, by extension, according to the ineffable mystery of His union with the body, as the Giver of Life, just as He Himself is by nature. That is why the body of Christ gives life to those who partake of Him. For, when He comes into mortal beings, He drives out death and removes corruption, having within Himself the power that utterly abolishes corruption’, cf. Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, trans., intro., and notes by Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, PSB 41 series, Bucharest, 2000, pp. 400–401.
- 4
Father Dumitru Stăniloae states that ‘Christ is the true Head, or the fundamental hypostasis, of the Church, which He constitutes and sustains by continually infusing His life into it or into its members, which are held together and united both amongst themselves and with Him’ (Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. III, I.B.M.B.O.R. Publishers, Bucharest, 1997, p. 11).
- 5
St Basil the Great, Homilies on the Hexaemeron, Homilies on the Psalms, Homilies and Sermons, trans., intro., notes and indices by Fr. D. Fecioru, PSB series, vol. 17, published by I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucharest, 1986, p. 343.
- 6
St John Chrysostom, Writings, Part III, Homilies on Matthew, ‘Homily XXV, III’, in PSB 23, trans., intro., index and notes by Fr Dumitru Fecioru, published by I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucharest, 1994, p. 324.
- 7
Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, ‘The Sacrifice of Christ and Our Spiritualisation through Partaking of It in the Divine Liturgy’, in Orthodoxia, I, (1983), p. 108.
- 8
Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, note 291 on St Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of St John, trans., intro., notes by Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, PSB series 41, Bucharest, 2000, p. 170.
- 9
Nichifor Crainic, Holiness – the Fulfilment of Humanity. A Course in Mystical Theology, published by the Metropolis of Moldavia and Bukovina, Iași, 1993, p. 112.
- 10
Saint Gregory Palamas, Triad I, 3, 38; translation in J. Meyendorff, Défense des saints hésychastes, pp. 192–193.
- 11
“Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts. Always giving thanks for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father” (Ephesians 5:19–20). ‘And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him’ (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
- 12
Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. III, published by I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucharest, 2003, pp. 43–44.
- 13
Saint Gregory of Nyssa, ‘On the Godly Order of Life and on True Asceticism’, in Writings, Part I, PSB series, vol. 29, p. 477.
- 14
Saint Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, trans. and with an introduction and notes by Rev. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, published by I.B.M.B.O.R., PSB 80 series, Bucharest, 1983, Translator’s Introduction, note 373, p. 298.
- 15
Saint Gregory Palamas, Homilies, vol. 3, ‘On the Twelfth Sunday of Luke, on the subject of the miraculous healing of the ten lepers’, translated from the Greek by Parascheva Grigoriu, Anastasia Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, p. 336.
- 16
St John Chrysostom, Writings, Part I, Homilies on Genesis (I), Homily XXXII, III, in PSB 21, trans., intro., index and notes by Fr Dumitru Fecioru, published by I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucharest, 1987, p. 413.
- 17
Saint Gregory Palamas, Homilies, vol. 3, ‘On the Twelfth Sunday of Luke, on the subject of the miraculous healing of the ten lepers’, translated from the Greek by Parascheva Grigoriu, Anastasia Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, p. 337.
- 18
‘First of all, I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world’ (Romans 1:8); ‘I have learnt to be content (satisfied) with whatever I have. I know how to live in humility, and I know how to live in abundance; in every and all circumstances I have learnt to be content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have plenty or am in need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:11–13); ‘Godliness is great gain, but only when one is content with what one has’ (1 Timothy 6:6).
- 19
Saint Gregory Palamas, Triads, II, 1, 30; translated in J. Meyendorff, Defence of the Hesychast Saints, pp. 284–285.
- 20
Saint Gregory Palamas, A Discourse for Those Who Find Peace through Piety. On Prayer, 20, in FR, vol. VII, p. 233.
- 21
Philokalia VII, p. 151.
- 22
Abba Isaac the Syrian, Preserved Ascetic Writings, Homily 24, St Nicodemus Press, p. 126.
- 23
Saint Gregory the Wonderworker, Address to Origen, in Caesarea of Palestine, at the end of his studies, in Origen’s presence, before setting off for home, in PSB, vol. 10, I.B.M.B.O.R. Publishers, Bucharest, 1984, trans. Rev. Prof. Constantin Cornițescu, p. 16.
- 24
Evagrius Ponticus, A Treatise on Prayer, in Philokalia I, trans. by Rev. Dr D. Stăniloae, Humanitas Publishing, 2017, p. 75.