Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
Interpretation
Gratitude enhances our understanding of God as it connects us to His essence, which is love.
This quote by Thomas Merton emphasizes that our comprehension of God matures through the practice of gratitude. By acknowledging our thankfulness, we open ourselves to recognizing the divine nature of God as love, which enriches our spiritual experience and understanding of truth.
In practice
In a sermon about thankfulness, one might say, 'As Merton reminds us, our knowledge of God is perfected by gratitude.'
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.
Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America.
The socialism I believe in isn't really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it's the way I see football and the way I see life.
The body is a boat that carries the soul in the ocean of the world. If it is not strong, or it has a hole, then it cannot cross the ocean, so the first duty is to fix the boat.
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.
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