Ephesians 5:18-20
be filled with the Spirit… giving
thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God
the Father
Col 3:17 And whatever
you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Tobit 12:6. Proclaim
before all with due honor the deeds of God, and do not be slow in thanking him
Mark 14:23-24 Then he took a cup, gave
thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He
said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for
many."
Gratitude to God for the gift of
life directs us to the magnanimity of all God's blessings. There is a need in every man and woman to express their
praise, adoration, and admiration to God. This is why a Sabbath day is
commanded by the 3rd commandment, and why ingratitude is the sin
which often causes the neglect of the commandment. And, if this is given - that
gratitude is the reason one should keep holy the Sabbath day which is reserved
for God - we can immediately say that the 2nd commandment is at
stake when the 3rd is disobeyed. Here is the connection. We know
that using the name of God or the name of Jesus in anger or as a curse is a
great sin. So likewise it is often a sin to use it carelessly, in a trite and
habitual manner. The words “O my God” are used often not as the
commencement of a prayer, (let alone an Act of Contrition). But while these may
be some of the worst ways that the 2nd commandment is broken, they
may not be the most frequent. Especially for the Christian, the most frequent
way that the 2nd commandment is broken is by ingratitude to God, a
lack of prayer, and failure to live a full life of thanksgiving. To take the
name “Christian” without doing these is to take the name of Jesus Christ on
oneself, but in vain (at least partially). When we seek to take the name of
Christ and honor it with our lives (“Christians”) we find that we need a way to
take that name more sincerely, more actively, more concretely. In truth we are
not able by ourselves to give God sufficient thanks in proportion to his
greatness. The only “thank you”s which in themselves rose to the level that God
deserves were these: the blessings on his Father which Jesus spoke,
particularly over the Eucharist at the Last Supper, and the self-offering of
Jesus to His Father through his Death and Resurrection. Only Christ can take
the name “Christ” with perfect gratitude. There is only one way that our
thanksgiving to God can become sufficient, and that is if we unite our praise,
our thanks, our prayers, to the Lord in the Eucharist. That is, if we fulfill
the 3rd commandment in the exact same way that the Church directs us
to fulfill it: by participating in the Sabbath Eucharist in commemoration of,
and union with, the Death and Resurrection of Christ. Christ-like gratitude is
at the core of the 2nd commandment, and necessary for the perfection
of that gratitude, is the communion with Christ and his grateful offering in
the Sabbath Eucharist. Only after this can we be in a position to live that
gratitude for the gift of life, gratitude for all other gifts in the other
commandments. To delve deeper into the 2nd commandment we must also
reference it against the first petition that Jesus instructed us to pray in the
Our Father. It is probably the most quoted reference to the “Name” of God in
all of Christianity: the prayer that God's Name would be kept “holy” by men:
“hallowed be thy Name!” With such an important status as this prayer has, how
can we say that it is not essential to keeping the commandment that concerns
the Lord’s name? The Lord’s prayer is essential to the 2nd commandment. But how
do we fulfill the petition to hallow God's name? There is a key scripture text
which shows us that if we really want to keep the 2nd commandment,
then we must strive to give God thanks and praise with an ever increasing
appreciation of his goodness and mercy. The reference is the Magnificat of
Mary. She says “The almighty has done great things for me, and holy is
His Name” (Luke 1:49). The Lord’s name is proclaimed holy precisely in
Mary’s acknowledgement of the “great things” that she had gratefully received
from the Lord. The entire Magnificat of Mary is a tribute, unparalleled by any
human person, to the greatness of God, by recounting the greatness of his
actions. Mary cannot be content with giving the Almighty Lord mere lip-service
thanks. She proclaims his marvelous deeds, and her life of unprecedented faith
shouted aloud the same thing in example, which her lips proclaimed in exulted
words. This is what it means for us to hallow the Lord’s Name. This is the life
of thanksgiving at the core of the 2nd commandment. This is the very
reason the offering of the Liturgy is called “Eucharist,” that is,
“Thanksgiving.” After all this we can say if people really kept the 2nd
commandment, they would keep the 3rd.
