As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, this reflection invites us to look deeper: How grateful are we—truly? Is our gratitude limited to one day of good food, family gatherings, and rest? Or can we also be grateful in the challenging moments, when life feels heavy or uncertain?

In this video, we explore:

✨ What real, everyday gratitude looks like

✨ Why gratitude matters even when life is difficult

✨ A powerful reminder from Pope Francis on focusing on blessings

✨ How daily thanksgiving can reshape our perspective, our joy, and our relationship with God

Gratitude isn’t just for the last Thursday in November—it’s meant to shape our prayer, our mindset, and ultimately who we are.

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Thanksgiving & Beyond: Becoming a More Grateful Person | JOF+ 11/27

And as we get ready as a nation and a culture to celebrate Thanksgiving, it’s also a great time for us to ask ourselves. How grateful am I truly? Am I just grateful when I’m standing around a table laden with food and desserts, surrounded by family, on a day of rest, Or am I also grateful in the hard and difficult moments of my life. Gratitude is easy, in times of plenty and times of happiness. That’s what’s hard for us to remain grateful. When things aren’t going, quite the way, we want them to. But my friends. it needs to be for so much more than just the last Thursday in the month of November. It needs to be a daily part of our prayer. A daily part of our mindset and a daily part of who we are. Time and again, psychologist, and mental health professionals have said, grateful people are happier people because when I’m grateful, I’m able to keep my problems in perspective. Yeah. this part of my life might not be going so well, but it’s just one part. There’s all these other parts were God’s blessing me and I’m grateful for that. I’m able to keep things in perspective. When I lose that idea of gratitude than my problems, my difficulties, take over. Pope Francis shortly before he died, said something that really struck me. He said, if all we do is focus on the negative or what’s wrong in my life, I miss the much bigger portion, which is the blessing. And as we all know, that’s an easy tendency for all of us to fall into. So as we celebrate Thanksgiving. Let’s make ourselves a commitment to not only be grateful today, to be more grateful people every day, because when we stop to give, thanks each and every day of our lives will not only be happier. People but much, more importantly will be more grateful people because it will open our eyes and our hearts the realize how much God has truly blessed us.