Happy New Year’s to all of you. My prayer for each of you for the coming year is that you draw just a little bit closer to Jesus this coming year, for He is the source of all blessings.
Blessings. As I prayed over the readings for today, I was struck by how often theymention that God wants to bless us. In today’s first reading, from the Book of Numbers, the Lord tells Moses the form of blessing that He wants Aaron and the priests to use when they bless the people; “The LORD bless you and keep you! The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you! The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!”
Today’s Responsorial Psalm, Psalm 67, repeated calls on God to bless His people in His mercy. And today’s second reading, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, tells us of God’s ultimate blessing to us, namely that in the fullness of time, He sent His Son, born of a woman, to ransom us from sin and death, and to offer us adoption as children of God.
In truth, God showers His blessings on us every moment of our lives. Every breath we take, every beat of our heart is a blessing from God. All the people and circumstances in our lives offers us countless blessings from God, to grow in faith and love.
How are we suppose to respond to the reality of God’s blessings in our lives? Again, we need to look no farther than today’s Psalm, “May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you!” Praise is the most fitting response that we can give to God. In other words, we should respond to God’s blessings with gratitude.
I have been reading more about gratitude lately, and not just in religious publications. Recently, after doing some research, I bought myself a new daily planner. I am sure with the new year, many of you have also picked up a new planner. Planners help us organize our days, and hopefully keep us focused on getting our “to-do-list” done. I got one of the new EVO Planners. It is by a group called Project EVO, and it is based on brain type science. It short, science suggests that there are four main “brain types” based on our core nature and how we process information. I’m an Oracle, if you are curious, which means that I am more of an intuitive, abstract type that process and develop ideas privately in my mind. But one of the things that I found most interesting in this planner is that each day I am to start by writing down something I am grateful for.
Apparently there is a new branch of psychology called “positive psychology” which aims to develop and nurture the affirmative aspects of human behavior through scientific studies and effective intervention methods to achieve emotional fulfillment in individuals. Gratitude has been found to be one of the strongest positive emotions and is very often linked to happiness – the ultimate state of well-being that every human being strives to pursue. One researcher at the University of California in Riverside found that gratitude brings a lot of positive emotions such as being energetic and helpful, more hopeful, forgiving and empathetic, and less depressed or resentful. Grateful people also become more inclined to religion and spirituality.
Another scientist at the University of California at Davis, summarized the positive aspects of gratitude that various studies have found: Psychological benefits include feelings of alertness and wakefulness, higher levels of joy, pleasure, optimism and other positive emotions.
Physical benefits include improved immune system and blood pressure, decreased occurrences of aches and pains, more inclined to exercise and healthy living, and better sleeping patterns.
Social benefits include feeling less lonely and demonstrating better social interactions by showing more signs of forgiveness, being outgoing, helpful, compassionate and exhibiting generosity.
As Catholics, this really should not come as something new for us, for the Eucharist which is the source and summit of our life comes from the Greek word that means thanksgiving or gratitude. So if praise and gratitude is the most appropriate response to God’s abundant blessings to us, how do we grow in gratitude?
Mary, the Mother of God, shows us how. As Jesus is the ultimate blessing that God the Father has given us, so Mary is the ultimate expression of praise and gratitude. In today’s Gospel passage, after the visit by the shepherds, we are told “Mary kept all these things,
reflecting on them in her heart.”
The first thing we need to do to grow as people of praise and gratitude is to become aware of God’s blessings in our lives. The only way that Mary could “keep all these things” in her heart was by being aware of God’s actions, His blessings in her life. I think that is why my planner tells me to start my day with writing down one thing I am grateful for each day. I think it is also a good way to end our days – literally counting our blessings. Writing them down helps them be more specific and concrete.
And it helps us do the second thing that Mary models for us; she didn’t just keep those things in her heart, rather she reflected on them in her heart. As we reflect on our blessings we become even more aware of how God’s actions are blessings. Sometimes things happen in our lives which we do not think of as being blessings, but if we think about them we see how God was opening a new door for us.
As we begin this new calendar year, I pray not only that we all draw closer to Jesus, the ultimate blessing that God has given us, but that we also draw closer to Mary, the Mother of God so that we can respond to God’s blessing more like her – with a song of praise and gratitude.