Ponder: "the secret of thanksgiving"

“If the soul very early learnt to say, ‘thank God,’ its troubles would be almost at an end.  There is a homely principle, if a motor skids, turn it in that direction.  If when troubles come, we turn them into thanksgiving our soul returns to balance at once. There will be sweetness, strength, honey in the mouth of the lion. There is no greater secret than the secret of thanksgiving, even thanksgiving for everything except our failures.  Even then, we may thank God for the humiliation failures bring.”

Vincent McNabb, OP, The Craft of Suffering (1936), 56.

Ponder: "the world is being found out at last"

“Many are now [1932] suffering the loss of earthly goods.  What a most glorious occasion of thanksgiving! It is to me great anguish to see so many people suffering in that way. But there is also a deep sense of thanksgiving that the world is being found out at last. We are almost heartbroken to see the Prodigal Son herding with swine, but rejoicing that he knows swill is no food for man and swine no company for gentlemen. There is some chance of the poor prodigal thinking of his father’s home and turning back. To go back is often spiritual progress. It hardly seems right to sing ‘Te Deum,’ and yet deep down in our hearts there is gratitude to God that Mammon is at last revealing is essential cruelty and vulgarity, so that mankind in his utter destitution will see that the only thing sufficiently steadfast is Nazareth and the only God worth worshipping is Jesus of Nazareth.”

Vincent McNabb, OP, The Craft of Suffering (1936), 57.

Ecclesiastes 9:11

"Which leads to a chance exchange of text messages with Yuval Levin, the conservative editor, writer and political theorist, that I realized was the best possible preparation for Thanksgiving.
I was fact checking his age for a book I've written on American conservatism in which he plays a key role.  When Levin told me he was 38, I noted that he had enjoyed a lot of early success.  He replied that "luck and chance go a long way," and then he offered this: "Ecclesiastes 9:11 should be stamped on luxury cars and Harvard degrees."..
The passage Levin cited reads as follows in the New International Version of the Bible: "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."...
Gratitude requires the swift, the strong, the wise, the wealthy, the brilliant and the learned (or those whom the world recognizes as such) to beware of their temptation to arrogance.
No matter how hard we might have toiled or how much we might have struggled, the bounty we enjoy is inescapably linked to unearned blessings."
E. J. Dionne, The Discipline of Gratitude.  The Washington Post. 26 Nov. 2015, A27