The maintenance of thankfulness of heart to God has much to do with our growth in godliness All true progress in the religious life is closely connected with the love of God. He that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him. And this charity or love is the cause and effect of thankfulness. What light and air are to plants, that, the belief and sense of God's presence and favour, is to Christian graces. They grow thereby. A spirit of thankfulness leads us to see mercies we should otherwise overlook: it enables us to appreciate more our daily and common blessings. While we magnify God and thank him for all his goodness, our hearts are enlarged, and when our hearts are enlarged, we run the way of God's commandments (as David says), where we only walked or crept before. We feel a liberty in well-doing and in great self-denials we did not feel before: because the spirit of thankfulness brings home to us at once the height of God's goodness, and the depth of our own unworthiness. Let us cultivate more than we do the spirit of thankfulness, and make thanksgiving more a part of our daily devotions. Let the peace of God rejoice in your hearts, wherein ye are called, and be ye thankful.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp