Thomas Griffin 11/22/25 (For Busted Halo)
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A fellow teacher at the high school where I work gave a reflection on a retreat last year that transformed my view of “giving thanks.” The teacher explained gratitude from the perspective of what we can give to God. He said that since God has created everything, everything belongs to him. We can sacrifice time for God and spend more minutes in prayer — but he is the source of time itself. We can make small sacrifices of what we eat by fasting or giving up dessert — but he created all of those things that we would give up.
This teacher claimed that giving thanks to God is the only thing we can give to him that God can’t give himself, because gratitude is the result of a free choice to show respect and honor to someone who has been good or done good for us.
Thomas Griffin is the chairperson of the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island where he lives with his wife and children. He has a masters degree in theology and is a masters candidate in philosophy. Thomas is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Empty Tomb Project: The Magazine. He is the author of Let Us Begin: Saint Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World.
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