Dear TAN Customers,

Although Thanksgiving is a secular holiday (and one with rather anti-Catholic roots), there is never a bad time to reflect on the need and power of gratitude. 

Challenge: Take thirty-seconds to think of that which you are grateful for. Rattle them off as fast as you can. Ready. Set. Go. 

Question: Did you only list the good things in your life? Or did you have the faith, the grit, the wisdom, to list some of your sufferings? 

The saints had many shared attributes, but one of them was gratitude–even in the midst of great suffering. It does not take a saint to be thankful for health, wealth, and a loving family and friends. It does, however, take a saint to be grateful for sickness, poverty, and enemies. 

Today, in true TAN fashion, I encourage you to express gratitude for your greatest sufferings. That, my friends, is how to baptize this secular holiday. Let us flip it upside down! 

Here are some quotes for you to meditate upon:

• Saint Augustine: “All that happens to us in this world against our will (whether due to men or to other causes) happens to us only by the will of God… Show him respect by accepting it from his hand, believe firmly that he does not send it to us without cause.”
• Saint Raphaela Mary of the Sacred Heart: “I will see the hand of God in all that happens to me, attributing nothing to individual people, who are but instruments used by Him in the work of my sanctification.”
• Saint Claude de la Colombière: “If we could see all He sees we would unhesitatingly wish all He wishes. We would beg Him on bended knees for those afflictions we now ask Him to spare us.” 

In the spirit of Job, I implore you to remember that “The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) It doesn’t say the devil taketh away. The Lord uses your enemies to bring you His divine medicine. Truly. This is not hyperbole. It is the realest of real spiritual insights that separate the saints from the rest of us. 

There is no greater book on this subject than Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence. I wish I could give it away to every person on the planet. Why? Because it flips your entire experience of life upside down! All of those aggravations, all those injustices you suffer, all those sufferings that pester you all day long, are in fact remedies prescribed to you by the Divine Physician. Do not turn away His medicine. 

Just as you would thank a surgeon who cuts deeply into you to remove a cancer, thank the Divine Physician for doing the same. Do not pretend to tell Him how deep to cut. He knows what He is doing. 

Thank Him. Thank Him today and every day after. 

If you have much suffering, my fellow Christian, then you have much to be grateful for. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

Conor Gallagher
CEO of TAN Books