In humble thankfulness for everything that God has done for us, the students and teachers of St. John's Orthodox Academy turn our eyes to our Creator in a week dedicated to the virtue of gratitude. Without gratitude, we could not be human. Indeed, no other virtue makes us more human, which is just another way of saying that no other virtue makes us more Godlike, since God is the measure of our humanity. The better we become at giving thanks through the blessed labour of prayer and acts of charity, the more thoroughly do we adopt the "mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:16). But gratitude does not act alone. At the heart of gratitude abides that supreme virtue of human consciousness: humility (which is our next virtue of the week). Since gratitude is nothing but a kind of humility in action, gratitude and humility serve to work out our salvation together. Humility is potency; gratitude is actuality. By humbly and gratefully realizing, and then acting upon the realization of, the derivative nature of all that we have and all that that we are, we express our utter, absolute, and total dependence on God for everything! Thus do humility and gratitude become the systole and diastole of a heart consecrated to a life in Christ. When, in thankless forgetfulness, I choose to live my life other than gratefully (that is, in my usual ridiculous and arrogant manner, like some drunken tyrant who burns through his most precious possessions with blind ingratitude) I only set myself upon a destructive path that eventuates in the moment of death, where I will stand bereft of grace and spiritually bankrupt when it comes time to pay back the life I have been loaned to live. Gratitude is the robust and consistent acknowledgement that I am living on borrowed time, with a borrowed body - seeing with borrowed eyesight, thinking borrowed thoughts, speaking with a borrowed tongue, hearing the laughter of children, the ecstasy of music, and the cry of my neighbour with borrowed ears - and that I am beholden to the Creator of "my" life, body, "my" eyesight, "my" thoughts, and "my" language to do everything in my power to use these borrowed talents for the Glory of God. As we prepare to turn the calendrical corner of the iniquitous day of thanklessness (Halloween) in order to set our course for that great American holiday (yea, the only true American holy-day) of Thanksgiving, let us prepare our hearts, and the hearts of our students, to be lifted up in gratitude for everything we have been given. May your week be graced with thankfulness to God! Yours Gratefully, Seraphim Winslow |