Happy Thanksgiving to my entire flock in the United States of America! Today many of us celebrate with family or friends, giving thanks for the unnumbered blessings that we enjoy. But why does God give us these blessings? In order to indulge our appetites for mortal pleasures, so we can have as good a time as possible while we are here on earth? No. All of God’s blessings, spiritual and material, are given so that, first, we might come to know and grow to love our beneficent Creator; second, so that we might share them with others; and third, so that we might experience a foretaste of the true life and fathomless blessings of the world to come and thus be encouraged in spiritual struggle to repent and practice virtue. Indeed, the saints understand even trials and afflictions as blessings, because, through the Passion of Christ and his Cross, suffering itself is transformed into a pathway toward everlasting communion with the Source of all life and joy. Truly, glory to God for all things!
Home / Work of the Church / Reflections in Christ / Metropolitan Tikhon /