“Anybody who receives my commandments and keeps them will be one who loves me; and anybody who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and reveal myself to him” (Jn14:21). Christ is made visible when we ‘receive and keep’ the commandments that he has given. And at the heart of Jesus’ commandments is love. He tells us this is the greatest commandment: to love God with the whole of our lives and the ‘second’ which is not separate from the first, ‘to love our neighbor as our self’. To love Christ is to keep his commandments and in keeping his commandments we will know more deeply God’s love and with this Christ will be revealed, meaning he will be more known to us…more known to us in an incarnate way.

"Love, genuine love, is liberated through gratitude."  

Sr. Kathy DeVico, Chapter Talk for the Feast of Christ the King, 

Every year at Thanksgiving we pause to reflect deeply on the  blessings we have received: the myriad ways God has touched us individually, communally, and as extended community to our family, friends and well-wishers.

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser wrote: “Gratitude is more important even than love because anything which does not take its root in gratitude will be self-serving and manipulative in some way.  Only when we give of ourselves to others because we are grateful for how we have been blessed—only then will our love flow out as pure and as not demanding something in return.  When we are not acting out of gratitude, we may be well-intentioned and outwardly generous in our actions, but we will not be truly acting in love” (Give Us This Day, November 2019, p.298-299). 

I received from Abbot Damian of Spencer a copy of his homily that he gave last week for the funeral Mass of Br. Meinrad.  He concluded his homily with the following: “I’ll let St. Therese and Fr. Thomas Keating have the final words.  Therese expressed her conviction in this way: ‘Even if I had on my conscience every conceivable sin, I would lose nothing of my confidence. My heart overflowing with love, I would throw myself into the arms of the Father, and I am certain that I would be warmly received.’ "