The Lord Christ Came to Spread Love and Peace
The Lord Christ Came to Spread Love and Peace
Let Us Begin Our New Year with Thanksgiving
I congratulate you, all my brothers, on the glorious Feast of the Nativity and on this new year, praying that it may be a happy year for everyone, bringing to us goodness and blessing… I congratulate you all—Muslims and Christians—on the Birth of the Lord Christ, because Christ came for all, and what He offered to humanity of lofty values and ideals is indeed for all of us, so that we may benefit from it in our practical life and raise our spiritual level until we reach holiness and perfection.
And how beautiful is what He said to us about His coming in the prophecy of Isaiah… “To preach good tidings to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives” (Is. 61:1). Yes, Christ came as salvation… help for those who have no help, hope for the hopeless, comfort for the small-souled, hope for those in the storm.
He came spreading love and peace everywhere… and teaching us to live in love and peace with all. “And He went about doing good” (Acts 10:38). He came to grant us peace in our hearts, peace with God and with people. Therefore, the angels sang at the time of His birth that beloved hymn: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Lk. 2:14). Truly, how beautiful is the phrase “peace on earth”… Would that it be a prophecy fulfilled in our days, and that there would be peace on earth.
Peace for the people of Palestine, peace for the people of Iraq, peace for the people of Sudan, peace for the people of Lebanon, peace for the people of Afghanistan, and indeed peace everywhere.
We pray for the peoples who have not obtained their rights; we pray for them to gain freedom and equality, and to be rid of hateful racial discrimination, for these are the principles that the Lord Christ spread: no difference between one people and another, all are equal before God, all are children of Adam and Eve.
But before we begin our new year with requests that we present to God, we ought first to thank Him for what He has already given us, for what He granted us in the past year. And we thank Him also because He granted us this feast to gather together in it: to meet and encounter one another, to rejoice together, and to exchange words of love and affection. And we thank Him because He granted us feasts in general as times of joy for us, for God, in His love for us, wants us to rejoice, provided that our joy be a holy joy in Him.
Let us thank God for all His gifts, and let thanksgiving be for us a way of life. And let us begin our new year with thanksgiving. Let us sit with ourselves and try to remember all the benefactions of God to us, all the good that His divine providence has offered us as individuals and institutions, and to us as one nation and one people, whether in this world or before it. Let us remember every good that we have not thanked for yet, and surely we shall find much. And as David the Prophet said in the Psalm: “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (Ps. 103).
Our fault is that we rejoice in the good but do not thank for it. Joy overwhelms us, and it makes us forget thanksgiving!… And God wants us to rejoice, but we ought also to thank, because our thanksgiving binds us to God more and more and makes us feel how much He is a loving and compassionate God, so our love for Him increases… Thus thanksgiving deepens our relationship with God and benefits us also within our hearts, as we become accustomed to fidelity and gratitude; and thereby the goodness of God to us also increases. And as one of the fathers said: “There is no gift without increase except the one without thanksgiving.” Yet we do not thank in order to request increase, but we thank out of love for God and gratitude for His goodness to us. As for the increase of good, it comes by itself from Him. And we also thank because our consciences reproach us if we do not do so, and we appear before ourselves as negligent. And if we thank humans for what they do for us, how much more should we thank God—blessed be His name. We ought to become accustomed to thanksgiving until it becomes one of our traits, and may thanksgiving truly be from our heart and not merely expressions we have grown used to without meaning.
Most people thank God on certain occasions: they thank Him every morning, in the evening before sleep, on occasions such as the New Year or feasts, and for certain reasons in their lives. And while the Church teaches us that every one of the seven prayers we pray each day must begin with the Prayer of Thanksgiving… yet the Holy Bible—in addition to this—teaches us an important spiritual principle that transforms our whole life into thanksgiving, as it says: “Giving thanks always for all things” (Eph. 5:20).
Even the funeral prayer for the dead, we begin it also with the Prayer of Thanksgiving, for death is not evil in itself; rather it is a golden bridge that transfers from earthly life to the remaining life in heaven. And the righteous person desires death just as he desires life, because it is the means that delivers him from the world of matter into the world of the spirit, into the Paradise of God.
We thank God because He is the Maker of good things, always doing good to us… And as the Scripture says: “All things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom. 8:28). Even the evil that some try to do to us, God the Master of all meets it on the way and turns it into good, as happened with Joseph the Righteous in the troubles he encountered from his brothers and from the sinful woman. Therefore, the believers in God’s planning and protection thank continually and are always joyful.
In the depth of their faith they say, “All is for good”… If what comes to us is good in itself, it will reach us as good in its nature. And if it is evil, God will turn it into good in its end. Therefore they never lose their inner peace at all, nor are they disturbed, nor do they worry, nor do they lose their trust in God the Protector, the Coverer, and the Helper.
Thanksgiving in people’s lives has degrees:
1—The lowest of them is thanksgiving for miracles, extraordinary gifts, great blessings, and abundant obvious goods that no one doubts their goodness or great benefit. And perhaps in other cases some may not thank!! And simple “ordinary” blessings may pass by them unnoticed, and other goods they may see as natural and normal, needing no thanksgiving!!
2—There is a higher thanksgiving, which is thanksgiving for the little. It may be a normal level of thanksgiving that a person thanks for the healing of someone from a serious disease such as cancer for example, or from a major operation in the heart or brain. But if he thanks for healing from a cold or a minor illness, this shows that he is accustomed in his life to thanksgiving, whether for much or little.
3—There is another form: thanksgiving for the hidden, for what is unseen… It is thanksgiving for troubles and hardships that could have reached us but did not, because of God’s protection and providence—matters that were being arranged for us in secret and could have harmed us, but God prevented them and stopped them, and we did not know. Likewise, without doubt, Satan exerts his utmost effort to harm us, and if we are now in good condition, it is because God has prevented harm from us; yet we do not thank because we do not know. Therefore, just as we thank for God’s saving us from the distress we see, we ought to thank Him for His protection from distresses we do not see.
4—Another degree of thanksgiving is thanksgiving always, for everything… We thank Him for His providence and good planning; we thank Him for the life He grants us day by day; we thank Him for health and strength; we thank Him for these days we live in which we can do good, thereby pleasing the Lord and making people happy. We thank Him for the shining sun, for there are lands that live in thick fog, and if the sun shines there one day, it becomes like a feast!
Do you not thank God, my brother, unless you find a treasure, or are appointed to a high position, or attain status or fame!! And who knows, perhaps this treasure ruins your life, and perhaps because of the position or the fame your heart is lifted up and you lose your eternity?! Thank God for the state you are in, for God, the Maker of good things—if He saw a better state for you—would have transferred you to it… except if God wants good for you and you do not want it for yourself because of your behaviors!!
Thank God for every good work you do… And know well that without God’s help you would not be able to do good or offer good to anyone. So thank God who works in you and with you. Is it not He who says in the Gospel, “Without Me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5)? And perhaps someone says, “I did that with my mind, my intelligence, and my effort”… We do not deny this, but it is God who granted you the mind, the intelligence, and the effort, and you ought to thank Him for this gift… And the mind alone is not enough without the grace of God with you, so you must thank Him for His grace.
Let us also thank God because He granted us to know Him. We pray to God in the Gregorian Liturgy and say: “You have given me the knowledge of Your knowledge.” We thank Him because He reveals Himself to us and teaches us His ways and commandments. He is the One who sent us His prophets and apostles and made known to us through divine revelation what we did not know. And the Lord gave us an idea about His heaven and His angels and revealed to us much about the unseen world, for which we thank Him.
We also thank Him for His promises to us… for the blessed eternity He prepared for us, according to the Scripture: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9). And we thank Him for His promise to be with us all the days until the end of the age (Mt. 28:20), and His saying: “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:10).
We also thank Him because He made His relationship with us a relationship of love, not of fear… And He said that the first commandment is: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt. 22:27). And in love He called us His children, as David the Prophet says in the Psalm: “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him” (Ps. 103). And as Scripture says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn. 4:18).
How many are the things for which we can thank God, for they are countless.
We move to another degree of thanksgiving, which is:
A very high degree in the life of thanksgiving, which is thanksgiving for trials and tribulations… We thank God for the tribulations from which He saved us, and this is among the lower degrees of thanksgiving. But greater than this is that we thank God in the existing tribulations that we are still living in and enduring, and by faith we trust that they are for our good, so we thank Him for them.
For patience in tribulation and bearing it is a virtue, and being content with tribulation and accepting it is a greater virtue, and greater than all this is thanksgiving for the tribulation… Believe me, if we thank only for blessings, then our love is for the blessings, not for God who gives them!!
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Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III published in Akhbar Al-Youm newspaper on 7-1-2009.
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