A Reflection for the Feast of St. James, Apostle
Find today’s readings here.
Everything indeed is for you,
so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people
may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God. (2 Cor 4:15)
When I was very young, my parents taught me to always say thank you to anyone who happens to assist me, in small ways or large. That rule extended to literally everyone—from professors to baristas, even someone who just happens to hold a door for me, or makes some space for me on a crowded subway.
It does not matter how forced or inconsequential these acts of service might sometimes seem. In my family, saying thank you is not just a reaction to kindness but actually the active practice of a way of life, one grounded in positivity and faith.
The personal significance of leading with gratitude in my life has only expanded as I have grown up, and its power to improve my mentality has actually become more apparent to me through my experience with sports.
Leading with a mentality of gratitude truly has the capacity to do transformative things in our lives—to make anything (even shin splints) seem like a blessing.
I started running competitively my first year of high school after joining the cross country team. When my race-day anxiety would begin to overwhelm me, my dad would remind me to focus on what I was thankful for: my health and fitness, my encouraging teammates and coaches, the pleasant parks I had access to. Thanking God for the ability to compete made one of the most stressful parts of my week a blessing rather than a burden.
The last two years of my running career have been plagued with injuries that require time off and slow recoveries. While it gets harder in those moments to process my situations in life with gratitude at the forefront, I try to cling to the aspects of my experience that warrant thanksgiving, like my access to amazing doctors and facilities and my supportive team.
I love this excerpt from today’s first reading from 2 Corinthians, because it seems to suggest that if we could only accept the grace that God is trying to give us, we would all be so full of appreciation for our lives that thanksgiving would “overflow.” If we were just willing to really engage with God’s presence in our lives, we would be amazed by all that we have to be grateful for.
I got close to a realization of this grace during my first run back after my injury, when I was so bursting with gratitude for the ability to run again that I almost wanted to thank God for my injury—for having to miss the sport enough to be overwhelmed by how lucky I felt to actually get to do it.
Today’s reading is a reminder to seek out that grace in a broader and more lasting way, because leading with a mentality of gratitude truly has the capacity to do transformative things in our lives—to make anything (even shin splints) seem like a blessing.
