Gratitude and Growing in Love

“Bless the Lord, O my soul;

and all my being, bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

And forget not all his benefits” (Ps. 103) is the responsorial psalm of today’s Liturgy.

 It certainly behooves us to thank  God for His benefits to us, to consider what they are, to become aware of God’s graces and to appreciate them.  Think of how you feel and the effects of when someone acknowledges who you are, what you have done for them and how much you are cherished by them.  God, too, I believe, appreciates our gratitude, not that His giving to us depends on our response. God is love and showers us with the gifts of his love unconditionally.

In the Gospel of today,  Jn 21: 20-25, Jesus asked Peter three times whether he loved  Him.  God wonders that same about us and one of the ways to express our love is by blessing God for all the great things He does in our lives.  When Peter says: “Yes, Lord, I love you,” Jesus says to him “Feed my sheep.”

Love, if it is to mature, needs the “watering,” the “cultivating,” and the “fertilizing,” that occurs by unselfishly caring for others, meeting their needs, being for the other in a way that they experience their greatest potential as a human being, the potential, in turn,  to give of their lives for and to another, the potential of creating a union of love, of being in communion with another/others. 

The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—model communion,  a union of love. Does my life reflect the life of the Trinity?