The Ultimate Virtue

  Ronald Rolheiser says in his reflection that I quoted from yesterday, "Gratitude is the ultimate virtue and the only real route to happiness. It is more important even than love because anything which does not take its root in gratitude will be self-serving and manipulative in some way. Only when we give of ourselves to others because we are grateful for how we have been blessed --only then will our love flow out as pure and as not demanding something in return.....
He goes on to say that the entire spiritual task of growing into a truly mature and loving person consists of rooting ourselves more and more in gratitude, "where love can flow out from a heart and demand nothing in return because it already has its return." He ends the reflection by telling us that "to explicitly express and celebrate gratitude is the singularly most important and healthiest thing we can do for ourselves, both spiritually and humanly."

I am going to really try to be grateful for everything this Advent; most of all I am grateful for the coming of the Lord into our world.