WWJW on our Grapes?

Dear Friends,

I haven’t felt this emotionally connected to construction paper circles since I was in preschool.

The growth of our grapevine of gratitude these last weeks, made up of so, so, so many individual purple construction paper grapes has been such a marvelous thing to witness. And I have more opportunities than most of you to read the grapes. They’re heartening, tender, and beautiful. They are all those things even though most of the things written down are not shocking or surprising. Health, family, country, work, kids — stuff like that.

I wonder what Jesus would have written on his grapes. WWJW - What would Jesus write?

One thing we can be sure Jesus gave thanks for is the bread and the wine at the Last Supper. We know that because it’s part of the Last Supper story in the Bible: Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it. Likewise, he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to his disciples. Bread and wine were ordinary, everyday things and yet still Jesus stopped for a moment and gave thanks to God. Gratitude — even for Jesus — was a moment to make a connection between the everyday and the eternal.

Jesus’ gratitude for the ordinary makes its way into the very heart of our worship as we celebrate the Eucharist, and we too tell that story. Like Jesus, we ought to let gratitude for the ordinary in our lives work its way into the heart of our lives.

The Catholic priest Ronald Rolheiser has written that “to be a saint is to be motivated by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less.” Most of our lives are everyday sorts of things, and so to be motivated by gratitude means we have to give thanks for all the ordinary everyday parts of our lives: bread, wine, family, friends, work and play. We have to marvel at the great gift of God that we have life, love, and hope.

In Christ,
Fr. Andrew