Gratitude

First, I’m grateful for the ride. Grateful for the journey. Grateful for everything that made me who I am. Good and bad, virtuous and sinful, it all hardly matters before the extraordinary, unbelievable, totally-beyond-logic fact that I exist. I am grateful for just being, for breathing, for sparkling with life for a moment. Regardless where I’m coming from, regardless where I’m going, having existed is an unthinkable gift. Regardless what I do with it, this life – this day, this very moment – remains a gift for which I’d need another life just to express my gratitude and awe.

I’m grateful for God’s endless patience with me. I’m grateful that He waits for me to grow, that He doesn’t interrupt this growth, that He allows all this time for my search for meaning. I’m grateful He remained close to me through my moments of sin and through my moments of virtue. I’m grateful He worked virtue in my being, so I may experience even but a shade of His presence. I’m grateful He allowed my sins to happen and didn’t force virtue upon me when He foresaw me walking towards sin. I’m grateful for the complete freedom He allows me, His creature, and for the ultimate respect and trust He shows me by granting me this freedom.

I am grateful for being where I am today, for doing what I do today, for having been found worthy to work in His world even for a moment.

Finally, I am grateful for the mystery I perceive hidden in my flesh. I am grateful I can look at myself and see a mystery waiting to be fulfilled in the age to come. This flesh and its sins, this mind and its limits, this heart and its ugliness, all of myself here and now: I am grateful for it all, for out of this death, out of this nothingness a new I, an I which is now but a mystery to myself, an I ‘in His image and likeness’ will be revealed in the Kingdom, according to His promise.

Above all, I am grateful for this promise and for the Cross on which He died out of Love: mad, unjustified, unnecessary, completely free and Self-sacrificial Divine Love  for me, and for you, and for this whole world.