In thanksgiving

Hey ya’ll,

Over the next couple of days, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, The Pillar will be operating in a low gear: We’ll publish immediately if something big and important happens, but apart from that, we’ll be spending a few days with our families, in thanksgiving for the gifts the Lord has given us.

We’ll be praying for you.

Meanwhile, here’s some wisdom from St. John Chrysostom:

“Behold [a] consolation, a medicine which heals grief, and distress, and all that is painful. And what is this? Prayer, thanksgiving in all things. And so He wills that our prayers should not simply be requests, but thanksgivings too for what we have. For how should he ask for future things, who is not thankful for the past? But in everything by prayer and supplication. Wherefore we ought to give thanks for all things, even for those which seem to be grievous, for this is the part of the truly thankful man.”

And from Doctor of the Church St. John Henry Newman:

“The Book of Psalms is full of instances of David’s thankful spirit, which I need not cite here, as we are all so well acquainted with them. I will but refer to his thanksgiving, when he set apart the precious materials for the building of the Temple, as it occurs at the end of the First Book of Chronicles; when he rejoiced so greatly, because he and his people had the heart to offer freely to God, and thanked God for his very thankfulness.

‘David, the king ... rejoiced with great joy; wherefore David blessed the Lord before all the congregation; and David said, Blessed be Thou, Lord God of Israel, our Father, for ever and ever ... Both riches and honour come of Thee, and Thou reignest over all; and in Thine hand is power and might, and in Thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Now, therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious Name. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.’

Such was the thankful spirit of David, looking back upon the past, wondering and rejoicing at the way in which his Almighty Protector had led him on, and at the works He had enabled him to do; and praising and glorifying Him for His mercy and truth.

David, then, Jacob, and St. Paul, may be considered the three great patterns of thankfulness, which are set before us in Scripture;—saints, all of whom were peculiarly the creation of God’s grace, and whose very life and breath it was humbly and adoringly to meditate upon the contrast between what, in different ways, they had been, and what they were.

A perishing wanderer had unexpectedly become a patriarch; a shepherd, a king; and a persecutor, an apostle: each had been chosen, at God’s inscrutable pleasure, to fulfill a great purpose, and each, while he did his utmost to fulfil it, kept praising God that he was made His instrument.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Yours in Christ,

JD Flynn
Ed Condon
and everyone at The Pillar