Villa La Paz Newsletter March 2026

Gratitude – a feeling of thankful appreciation for favors or benefits received; thankfulness

Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart. When you arise in the mornin, give thanks for the morning light.Give thanks for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and the joy of living. And if perchance you see no reason for giving thanks, rest assured the fault is in yourself.

Ascribed to Chief Tecumseh

You may lose a loved one, or facet after facet of your physical health, but you can still be grateful for what you have left. And what if you lose more, and more, and more, if bad goes to worse? Perhaps at some point all of us are reduced to despair, but my hunch is–and I hope I never need to prove this in my own life, but I may, any of us may–having lost everything, one may still be able to hold on to one’s attitude, one’s practiced habit of gratitude, of turning to God in Job-like agony and saying, “For this breath, thanks. For this tear, thanks. For this memory of something I used to enjoy, but have now lost, thanks. For this ability not simply to rage over what has been taken but to celebrate what was once given, thanks.”

Brian McLaren

All the truly great persons I have met are characterized by what I would call radical humility and gratitude. They are deeply convinced that they are drawing from another source; they are instruments. Their genius is not their own; it is borrowed. We are moons, not suns, except in our ability to pass on the light. Our life is not our own; yet at some level, enlightened people know that their life has been given to them as a sacred trust. They live in gratitude and confidence, and they try to let the flow continue through them. They know that “love is repaid by love alone,” as both St. Francis of Assisi and St. Therese of Lisieux have said.

Father Richard Rohr

Being grateful would seem to be difficult at the present time, with the world’s present focus of extreme partisanship, ongoing wars, religious conflicts and ethnic strife. How can we be grateful in such times? As the reflections above state we can be grateful for small blessings or blessings that once existed and we enjoyed but are no longer available to us. We can be grateful for the smile of a child, the hug of a spouse, the comraderie of friends. We can be grateful for a glass of clean water which half the world does not enjoy, for the food that is so available to us that too many in the world suffer from a lack of. Being grateful for these gifts, for all that we have is pure gift from our Heavenly Father, should induce us to share our gifts with those who have not. What greater joy coud there be to see someone lifted out of despair, out of want by our efforts. Gratitude for our blessings should inspire compassion for those who lack the basic necesities of life.

What am I grateful for? I am grateful for the purpose God has given me to care for His children, His poor little ones. I am grateful for a loving family that supports me in this service. I am grateful for the volunteers who come to the home and give of their time to make life a little more joyful for the children. I am grateful for our employees who form a nurturing environment for the children, and most of all I am grateful to our Heavenly Father Who is caring for His children through our efforts. As in any situation all is not sunshine and flowers but the love in the home is palpable and enduring.

We invite you to be grateful, to acknowledge the benevolence of our Heavenly Father for His gifts of sunshine, flowers, rain, a bright moon, a starry sky and the other blessings He bestows on us. And what about the unpleasent occurrences in our lives: deteriorating health, ageing that robs us of faculties we once enjoyed. If we can be grateful for these that teach us patience and compassion for others facing similar problems, we have achieved an inestimable point in our journey through life.

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank-you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would like to forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our being as a gift of God to be grateful for.

Let us not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

The other blessing I am grateful for is the support and love of those who seek to care for the marginalized, the vulnerable and the least of God’s little ones. God’s love and peace to you. Please keep us in your prayers.