Villa La Paz Newsletter June 2025
Gratitude – a feeling of thankful appreciation for favors or benefits received: thankfulness
Webster’s New World Dictionary
Third College Edition
Gratitude flows from the recognition that all that is, is a divine gift born out of love and freely given to us so that we may offer thanks and share it with others. The more we touch the intimate love of God which creates, sustains, and guides us, the more we recognize the multitude of fruits that come forth from that love. They are fruits of the Spirit: joy, peace, kindness, goodness, and gentleness. When we encounter any of these fruits, we always experience them as gifts. When, for instance, we enjoy a good atmosphere in the family, a peaceful mood among friends, or a spirit of cooperation and mutual support in a communuity, we intuitively know that we did not produce it. It cannot be made, imitated or exported. To people who would like to have our joy and peace, we cannot give a formula to produce it or a method to acquire it. It is always perceived as a gift,to which the only appropriate response is gratitude.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Gratitude shifts our focus from what is missing to the abundance that surrounds us. Life is full of blessings-big and smalland every day is a chance to recognize our wins, embrace the journey, and appreciate the goodness we often take for granted. Let us celebrate what we have, cherish the moments, and keep a heart full of thankfulness.
Hadassah Knight
To all else Thou has given us, O Lord, we ask for but one thing more: Give us grateful hearts.
George Herbert
English poet and clergyman,
17th century
A grateful heart is a heart open to God’s all encompassing love for from this love all that we have and will have is bestowed on us as gifts. All that we have has its origin in God’s benevolence and not in what we have merited or earned. When we drink a glass of cold water do we thank God for that gift, realizing that half the world does not have access to clean water? Are we thankful for the food we consume knowing that too many in the world do not receive adequate nutrition? Are we thankful for our work which contributes to our dignity and to God’s creation when so many in the world are reduced to begging or other degrading means just to survive? Being aware of our gifts makes us aware of persons who do not have clean water, sufficient food or meaningful work and awakens in us the desire to help others attain what we have. In other words gratitude can lead us to charity, the desire to help those who lack the necesities of life and in so doing we become instruments of God’s love for His children. It is a supreme indication of God’s humility that He depends on us to care for His children. Too many of us do not accept the responsibility given to us, to share our gifts or talents with those who require them.
Needless to say we are very grateful to you who support our children and the children of the world. They are the most vulnerable of God’s loved ones since they are totally dependent on our benevolence. We are God’s hands and feet and, most decidedly, His compassion. The world can only be made better if we accept our responsibilities to care for the least of His little ones.
Finally, I want to end this newsletter with a prayer of hope. Our country and world are being torn asunder by a divisiveness fueled by political animosity, ethnic hatred, and continuing marginalization of the poor, the migrants and others who some deem inconsquential and useless to society. The prayer below is from Cherokee descendent Reverend Dr. Randy Woodley which reminds us of the preciousness of all life in its diversity.
I am humbled that I will never know everything about You, but I am grateful that through the lives of the others I can know of You. While I thank You for those who are like me, I especially thank You for those who are different than me. I thank You for those who are younger than me and those older than me; for those who have less than me and those who have more than me; for those more physically able than me and those less physically able than me; for those whose skin is of a lighter color than me and those of a darker hue than me; for those of a different gender than me and those of the same gender as me; for those of a different worldview than me and those with a similar worldview to mine. May we together discover a new story for our country where everyone has an equal voice-even those with whom we disagree and even with those who have no voice.
God’s blessings on you and yours. Please keep us in your prayers.
