We say ‘thank you’ all the time, but we rarely live a life of gratitude. Being truly thankful requires a life-change, more than just a few words. When we want to thank God, we come to His Church, bow and worship Him, and live a new life of gratitude.
My brothers and sisters, in this morning’s gospel, we hear yet another miracle of Christ. In this case, it was 10 lepers who had approached Christ and asked him to be healed, and he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they were going to the temple, they realized they had been healed. But only one returned to Christ to say thank you. The other nine went on their way as if nothing had happened. “Oh, I guess we’re healed now. Okay, yay!” Only one took it upon his heart to go and say thank you to Jesus Christ. And it says in the gospel, “Praising and glorifying God, he went down on his hands and knees and he bowed in front of Jesus and kissed His feet.”
Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to experience, that God has healed us, He’s given us something that we may have asked for? And instead of just saying thanks, we came into His church, we bowed down in front of Him and we worshiped and glorified Him. Truly changed within us, truly living a life of gratitude to God, not just with our words, but with our very life, our hands, our feet, how we treat other people, how we support the church, how we make the choices in our day. Every single one of us in this church today has something to be thankful to God for.
Might be small, might be a great thing. We’re all very thankful that the hurricanes were not worse than they could have been. But the hurricanes were months ago. Are we still living the gratitude that we had for God that morning when we woke up alive? Or have we gone on with our day? Have we gone back to work? We’ve gone back to our routine. We have forgotten that God rescued us. This is the reality of our life. We get so wrapped up in today that we forget to live like God has truly blessed us. We forget to truly be thankful in our hearts and to spend time with God, to come into his church.
As I said in Greek divine liturgy, we call Θεία Ευχαριστία. Holy communion is called the Eucharist. That’s the big fancy church word. Divine thanksgiving. The divine liturgy is the service of giving thanks to God for everything that He has done for us. Every word of the divine liturgy, not just from Οur Father until the end of communion, but every word of the divine liturgy, my brothers and sisters, is for us to say thank you to God and to spend time worshiping as the one stranger did in this morning’s gospel.
But we’re too busy for God. We’re here today and I’m thankful that we’re here today. But where will we be tomorrow? Where will our heart be tomorrow? Will we forget tomorrow what God did for us today? This is our challenge, my brothers and sisters, to allow our hearts to constantly have the gratitude of God within us. And I promise you, it changes the way you look at life, when you live the attitude of gratitude as they say it. It’s nice rhyme. But if you live that in our hearts, we treat other people differently. You want to learn to be patient with people? Have thanks in your heart for how patient God has been with us.
When I think of what God has put up with me 55 years, oh, my. Presvytera has only seen the beginning. But if God has been that patient with me, I can show my appreciation and my gratitude to God by being patient with other people. Something I’m not always good at, I acknowledge. But that’s why the church gives us these gospel lessons over and over and over again. If we were able to learn the lesson once and remember it, the church would not remind us over and over and over.
But the church knows that we need help remembering how to change our hearts. The church knows that we’re going to say thank you today and maybe forget God tomorrow. So let’s today be reminded. Let’s live today in thanks to God, treating each other, strangers, foreigners, as the gospel says, with love and gratitude to God, worshiping Him, glorifying Him. But most of all, let’s not just go on with our life like nothing is different. Because when God does something for us, everything is different. Our whole life changes and our hearts open, and then we learn how to love. Glory to God for all things.
