An Advent Calendar for my Friends – December 3

Bouguereau, William: Cupid and Psyche as Children. 1889
Oil on canvas, 47 x 27 7/8 inches (119.5 x 71 cm), Private collection.

The Angel of Gratitude

by Anselm Grün

Gratitude has become scarce today. People make immense demands. They have the impression they are missing out on something. Therefore they need more and more. They have become insatiable and because of that cannot enjoy anything any more. Pascal Bruckner, a French philosopher, describes the human being of today as a big baby making immense demands of society. This “baby” can never get enough. And always the others are to blame if it is not well. Because they don’t give it what it absolutely needs for living.

The Angel of Gratitude wants to introduce a new flavour to your life. He wants to teach you to see everything with new eyes, with eyes of gratitude. Then you take a grateful look at the new morning, that you get up feeling healthy, that you can watch the sunrise. You are grateful for every breath flowing through you. You are grateful for the good gifts of nature you can enjoy for your breakfast. You live more consciously. Gratitude opens up your heart and makes you glad. You are no longer fixated on things that could annoy you. You don’t begin each morning being vexed about the horrible weather. You are not frustrated at once if the milk boils over. There are people who make their lives miserable because they only see the bad things. And the more bad things they see, the more this outlook is asserted by their experience. They attract small mishaps by their negative outlook. To thank is derived from to think. The Angel of Gratitude wants to teach you to think correctly and consciously. If you start thinking, then you will thankfully realize what has been given to you in your life. You will be grateful for your parents who have given you life. You will not only be grateful for the positive roots you have in your parents, but for the wounds and hurts they have dealt you. Because with that, too, they have shaped you as the person you are. Without those wounds you maybe might have become sated and insensitive. You would overlook the person next to you and their suffering. The Angel of Gratitude wants to open your eyes for seeing that throughout your life an angel of God has been with you, that a guardian angel has kept you from many a harm, that your guardian angel has turned even hurt and pain into a precious treasure for you.

The Angel of Gratitude presents you with new eyes to consciously take in the beauty of Creation and to enjoy it gratefully, the beauty of meadows and woods, the beauty of mountains and valleys, the beauty of of the sea, of rivers and lakes. You will admire the grace of a gazelle and the charm of a deer. You will no longer wander unknowingly through Creation, but thinking and thanking. You will perceive that in Creation you are touched by a loving God Who wants to show you how lavishly He cares for you.

Who looks at her life with gratitude will accept what happens to her. She will stop rebelling against herself and her fate. She will realize that every day an angel enters our lives to keep us from harm and to offer his loving and healing presence. Try to live through the next week with the Angel of Gratitude. You will see how everything looks differently, how your life takes on a new flavour.

You can also ask your Angel of Gratitude to teach you to be grateful for people you live with. Often we pray only for people who are important to us, if we want to change them or if we wish that God helps them, heals them and comforts them. Sometimes our prayer for the others is rather a prayer against them. We want them to become the way we would like them to be. If we are grateful for another person, we accept them unconditionally. They don’t have to change. They are precious just the way they are. Often people notice if we are grateful for them. Because being grateful has an effect of positive acceptance, of feeling accepted unconditionally. An American clergyman tells of a couple who had prayed for years for the father of the wife to get away from alcohol. And they asked many prayer groups for intercessions. But everything was useless. Only when they found the courage to thank the father for being the way he is they made it possible for him to change. Because he did no longer feel the unvoiced demand to change, he could change. Because he felt accepted unconditionally, he did not need the alcohol any more. Therefore ask your Angel of Gratitude for the miracle of people feeling loved unconditionally because of your gratitude, so that they may become whole in this love.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic

Song for December 3:

(Click pic!)

“Die tanzenden Seraphim”
(“The Dancing Seraphim”)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Das Engelkonzert” (“Concert of Angels”)