Gratitude - the Door to Spiritual Growth

A grateful heart is due glory to God. Gratitude enables us to accept our life events and the people involved in it. They may be good or bad, but we will be able to approach them with openness. We will be able to remain comforted in our emptiness and pain. Since we are able to accept everything in thankfulness our complaints will become lesser and lesser, and grow more in understanding. As we are grateful for everything we become humbler. We become kind and generous as we become more aware of the 'given' aspect of life. There is nothing to boast about, I give thanks, why should I be envious of someone? I am content with what I am, and I am grateful. When our hearts matures enough to give thanks, our burdens turn light, and we will be filled with peace and joy.

So a thanksgiving sacrifice should not remain a ritualistic offering; it needs to become a life pattern, it should be a style of approach to life itself. Only then we can bring into reality those things that we speak high as self-surrender and self-emptying.

The graciousness that overflows from a grateful heart is the heaven within. It is the experience of peace, gentleness and strength. It is from here all other dimensions of holiness sprouts and grows. It is the experience of freedom, an experience of being adorned like a flower, being fed like a little sparrow, being consoled like a weeping child. that is the moment we really can experience the reassurance of the immeasurable love of God.

It is in a grateful heart where heaven is born. Closing our hearts against the reality of givenness prepares hell for ourselves and for others. We become envious and afraid of other's growth, and we gossip, conspire and plot evil. We begin to accuse ourselves and fill us with guilt. Not being able to accept our own reality might fill us with shame. Let us be thankful for everything, not as an empty loud sound but from the heart. May heaven be born in us.

When I say (even at the moment of death) that I offer myself completely, actually what I really say is that I am grateful for everything.