The text of this article, translated from the Greek, is taken from an
address by Father Cyprian, a brother of the Holy Monastery of Sts. Cyprian and
Justina in Fili, Greece, and Secretary of the Holy Synod in Resistance. It was
delivered on October 4, 1999, at the convocation held annually at
the Novotel Convention Center, in downtown Athens, to honor the Name Day of
Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili.
My heart is inundated with sincere joy at
this moment, because, by the Grace of Christ our Savior, I am fulfilling an
obedience which, although very difficult, is at the same time very gratifying.
The great difficulty in question concerns my many inadequacies, of which you
have assuredly always been well aware; and I ask your forgiveness for these.
However, the great delight involved derives from the fact that this evening, at
our annual Eucharisteria [Thanksgiving],
we are celebrating the twentieth anniversary of your Episcopacy.
This
anniversary is very important for our monastic Brotherhood, for your wider
flock, and for our Church; it is an anniversary which prompts us to undertake
an historical retrospective of two decades filled with accomplishments for the
glory of God. Such an anniversary is, naturally, a source of special joy and
gladness for your spiritual children.
Now, every
happy anniversary is directly bound up with gratitude; that is, it reminds us
of, and underscores, our debt of gratitude and thanksgiving both to our Lord
and to the people whom His philanthropic right hand has used as instruments for
His glory, for our sanctification, and, in general, for the progress of His
salvific work.
I hope,
therefore, our Most Reverend Metropolitan, that you will allow me, rather than
mentioning those historic stages in your twenty years as a Hierarch that
portray your contribution to the Church, to focus my attention, instead, on the
topic of gratitude.
Let me take
this opportunity to proclaim with a loud voice, from this podium, that we are
most deeply grateful to you, since, among many other things, you have taught
us, and continue to teach us, in word and deed, that very gratitude which is
the predominant component of your personality. Hence, let my address this
evening, which centers on gratitude, be viewed as a spiritual repayment to Your
Eminence for your untiring toils, during twenty continuous years, for our
edification and consolation. I invoke the protection and strengthening of our
Lady Theotokos and
our Holy Patrons, Saints Cyprian and Justina, that, by your prayers, I might
expound on this subject.
I shall, at
the onset of my address, pose a crucial question: Is gratitude really a matter
of concern in our crisis-ridden era? Unfortunately, this question is raised not
only by worldly people, but also by pious Christians, who not only do not
practice gratitude in their lives, but who neither reflect on it nor perceive
its absence as a serious deficit. This constitutes, in the fullest sense of the
term, a very grave sin. How, indeed, is it possible for
Christians, who are deemed worthy of the greatest gift—that is, of being
members of the Body of Christ — to be unaware that gratitude is the fundamental
hallmark of Orthodox spirituality and an indispensable element of our Christian
identity?
We observe
with profound distress that this ignorance concerning gratitude constitutes yet
another proof of the corruption which the Orthodox ecclesiastical ethos has
undergone, owing to the influence of a worldly mentality. Such a mentality
leads man, a rational creature fashioned according to the image of God, into behavior
that is more irrational than that of irrational animals. Is this
characterization perhaps exaggerated? I shall let a Patristic text provide us
with the answer. This text relates a very charming, moving, and instructive
event, which speaks for itself and introduces us to the important issue of
gratitude.
A hyena, having a blind
whelp, took it in her mouth and delivered it to St. Makarios of Alexandria. She
pushed open the hatch of his dwelling with her head, went inside, and threw her
whelp at his feet. St. Makarios picked it up and ascertained that it was blind.
He spat on its eyes and prayed; the whelp then immediately opened its eyes.
After suckling it, its mother took it and departed.
On the following day,
the hyena brought St. Makarios the hide of a large sheep. The Saint looked at
it and said to her: Where did you find this? You must have eaten a sheep. And
so, since it is the result of an injustice, I will not accept it from you. The
hyena then bowed her head, knelt, and left the hide at the Saints feet.
The Saint said to her: I
tell you, I will not accept it, unless you swear to me that you will never
again cause distress to poor folk by eating their sheep. At this, she nodded
her head, as if to agree with St. Makarios. The Saint then accepted the
hide which the hyena had [in gratitude] brought him.
Let us now
attempt to approach, as succinctly as possible, the theological foundations of
gratitude as an indispensable hallmark of human nature. Orthodox Tradition
teaches us that man is a eucharistic being, that is, a rational creature who
exists in an unceasing communion of love (agape)
with his Creator and is oriented towards Him with an insatiable disposition of
gratitude, thanksgiving, and doxology. Man has this innate capacity for love
and thanksgiving because he is fashioned according to the image and likeness of
God; it is precisely for this reason that he bears the seal of gratitude
indelibly within himself. God freely created man out of His exceeding goodness,
in order that man might participate in Divine Goodness; and the Lord created beneficently so that His creatures, the
recipients of this beneficence, might gratefully commune with Him, offer
thanksgiving and glory to Him, and thus become partakers of Divine glory. The
desire to glorify God, says St. Basil the Great, is by nature implanted in all
rational creatures. St. John of Damascus, in a summary of Patristic teaching on
this subject, makes these telling remarks:
Since, therefore, God,
Who is good, and preëminently good, was not satisfied with contemplation of
Himself, but in His exceeding goodness willed that certain things should come
into existence which would enjoy His benefits and participate in His goodness,
He brought all things, both invisible and visible, out of non-being into being
and created them—including man, who is a compound of the visible and the
invisible.
In
connection with this, it should be firmly emphasized that we become fully aware
of this loving, grateful, and eucharistic nature of man in the sacred Mystery
of Divine Communion. What takes place here? In this Divine Mystagogy, we have a
foretaste of the eschatological glory of Deified human nature in the sanctified
atmosphere of thanksgiving and doxology to God; in the Liturgy, there is
revealed to us the fulfillment of the Kingdom of Heaven—that is, the communion
of God with His rational creatures in the glorified Body and Blood of the
God-Man, Christ the Savior—and we experience this fulfillment in our lives.
Mans
gratitude to his Creator reaches its highest point in this supernatural
Mystery, because his fallen nature receives the most sublime gift of re-creation,
renewal, and Deification in Christ, as St. Symeon the New Theologian writes
with profound lyricism:
Therefore, in partaking
of Thy Flesh, I partake of Thy Nature, and I truly participate in Thine
Essence, becoming a communicant and also an heir of Thy Divinity in the body,
greater than the Bodiless Powers, I reckon, and I become a son of God, as Thou
didst say, not to the Angels, but to us, thus calling us gods: I said: Ye are
gods, and all of you the sons of the Most High.
Therefore,
the supernatural and all-holy Mystery of Divine Communion is, in truth, the
Mystery of Gratitude. For this reason, as St. John Chrysostomos marvelously
puts it,
the dread Mysteries,
full of such great salvation, which are celebrated at every Liturgy, are also
called a Thanksgiving [Eucharistia] because they are the remembrance of many benefits, and they signify
the culmination of God's Providence towards us, and in every way cause us to be
thankful to Him.
From this
perspective, that is, of man's nature as a eucharistic being, we can now
understand very clearly the persistence of the Holy Fathers in exhorting us to
be unceasing practitioners of gratitude. This is the will of God, St. John
Chrysostomos pithily assures us, that we always give thanks; this is the mark
of a virtuous soul. And to the question of why this is the will of God, the
same Saint responds simply and precisely: God accepts nothing so much as a grateful
and thankful soul. In another place, he reiterates: Nothing so gladdens God as
when one is thankful.
However, it
would be very useful for us to mention also the immediate practical results of
blessed gratitude, in order to dispel—apart from anything else—the mistaken
idea of some, that gratitude pertains only to the contemplative life and
eschatological recompense. In the first place, we should not forget the
following important truth: in order to preserve a benefaction in the best way
possible, we should always remember it and constantly thank God for it. For the
best preservative of any benefaction, say the Saints, is the remembrance of
that benefaction, and a continual thanksgiving.
Next, the
immediate result of continual thanksgiving is the following: when our Lord
ascertains that we respond with gratitude to His gifts, He gives us richer
gifts and never ceases from doing good to us: For such is our Master, affirm
the Saints, that, whenever He sees that we are grateful for what has already
come our way, He bestows lavish gifts on us and never desists from doing good
to us, rewarding the gratitude of those who show obedience.12 In emphasizing
this idea, Abba Isaac the Syrian adds that, when he who is benefitted thanks
God, it is as if he provokes His Goodness to give greater gifts than the
previous ones: Gratitude on the part of one who receives provokes the Giver
[God] to give greater gifts than before.
We should
also keep in mind that constant remembrance of God's gifts ultimately proves to
be our best instructor in the virtuous life, since it unceasingly prompts us to
strive gratefully to reciprocate God's love: Remembrance of benefactions [and
gratitude for them] will be a suitable instructor for us in the virtuous way of
life.
I shall
conclude this section on the immediate practical benefits of Grace-filled
gratitude by extolling, in particular, its value for us as an invincible weapon
whereby we can repel all the devices of the demons: There is nothing so good as
thanksgiving... We have one weapon which is the best, and sufficient to repel
all such devices as these: in everything to give thanks to God.
End of
Part I
Source:
http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/gratitude.aspx
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