Hi, everyone! It’s Angel again. My dad asked me to thank you for reading our bulletin series on prayer. He says that he wants to thank you & that he hopes & prays that you’ve gotten something out of it that has helped you on your spiritual journey. He also wants to thank you because our last form of the 5 forms of Catholic prayer is prayers of thanksgiving.

Prayers of thanksgiving are, perhaps, the form of prayer that needs the least explanation. I think that we all know what it means to say thank you. I know that I give my dad a thank you paw or bark when he puts food in my bowl, grabs my leash to take me on a walk, or just lets me jump up into his lap. So, rather than explaining what it means to say thank you to God, & rather than telling you that we need to be thankful to God (I would hope that we all know that), I want to challenge all of us, myself & my dad included, to pray prayers of thanksgiving more. I would challenge all of us to be more outwardly grateful, my dad knows that he doesn’t (& maybe he couldn’t) ever express his gratitude enough.

We can never say thank you enough. It is easy to thank God for the miracles that happen in our lives, & they do, but what about the everyday blessings, blessings that to us might seem common or ordinary, blessings that are just there? How easy it is to take the blessings of God & others in our lives for granted?

So, it’s a shorter column this week, but maybe a bigger challenge. A challenge to put our thankfulness into action & into prayer.