Chrysostom
Beloved of All
Your thanksgiving is good and right, and I rejoice to hear it. To give thanks to God when He has kept you well and safe is the fitting sacrifice, and it purifies the conscience and makes the mouth pure when it is exercised in such words.
You did well to thank Him not only for your happiness today but also for the tears of yesterday. Tears are not wasted when they unload the burden of the mind before God. We are taught not to be discouraged at present things but to show great gratitude to Him, both for what we have received and for what is to come, for we have received a kingdom which cannot be moved and we serve God acceptably with reverence and gratitude.
Continue in this same spirit. After thanksgiving for past gifts, ask also for the greater things, that you may be filled with the Holy Spirit, for without that grace we cannot live as we ought or do anything noble and great through Christ. Let your mouth be given to continual thanksgiving and to spiritual words, and let your life show temperance and every virtue, so that your strength may not be merely in becoming stronger and wittier in yourself, but in being made steadfast by His grace.
I join you in thanking God for His keeping care over you, and I pray He will keep you still, fill you more fully with His Spirit, and lead you through every change to that which is eternal and unshaken. In the name of Jesus, amen.
You did well to thank Him not only for your happiness today but also for the tears of yesterday. Tears are not wasted when they unload the burden of the mind before God. We are taught not to be discouraged at present things but to show great gratitude to Him, both for what we have received and for what is to come, for we have received a kingdom which cannot be moved and we serve God acceptably with reverence and gratitude.
Continue in this same spirit. After thanksgiving for past gifts, ask also for the greater things, that you may be filled with the Holy Spirit, for without that grace we cannot live as we ought or do anything noble and great through Christ. Let your mouth be given to continual thanksgiving and to spiritual words, and let your life show temperance and every virtue, so that your strength may not be merely in becoming stronger and wittier in yourself, but in being made steadfast by His grace.
I join you in thanking God for His keeping care over you, and I pray He will keep you still, fill you more fully with His Spirit, and lead you through every change to that which is eternal and unshaken. In the name of Jesus, amen.
