The main thing is not the gift, but the one who gives! We have no joy, though gifts pour on us (from God and people, and angels). God pours out streams of Grace to us (‘God gives the Spirit without measure’), even the created world – is embodied Divine love (‘Food – is God’s love, which you can eat’) and everything that exists (evil does not exist outside me (unless in other persons); evil – is ours, it comes not from outside (not what enters into a person from outside defiles them (through hearing, through the mouth, or otherwise, e.g., blood transfusion, etc. – V.A.), but out of the human heart come murder, adultery… in short, evil), but we create it; evil – is the only thing that rightfully belongs to us, because it is created by us, and everything else – is not ours, but God’s Gift; evil is not given to us and is not gifted – it is the result of the wrong handling of the gift, appropriating it; outside us there is no evil, so we fight against the evil we have produced within ourselves, not outside ourselves, where it does not exist, and not in others, because we can only help others from outside (suggesting a way, an example of overcoming evil within ourselves and the radiance of the divine image, thus reducing the number of temptations that nourish evil from outside…) to overcome evil, but to overcome it (to come out of illusion into reality, and through it to the Truth, to ipostatic being) each must do it themselves (with God’s help)!), is given to us (or given as a givenness, behind which we must recognize God’s Gift: when I came into the world – the sun was shining, air was there, earth, parents… reality was – it was all there before me, so subjectively it is a givenness, but objectively – God’s gift to me, the whole universe exists for me!
Gratitude prompts us to know the giver – who gave me the Gift?! Someone gave you (anonymously) what you have dreamed of all your life! Wouldn’t you be curious, who did it (who made you happy), wouldn’t you want to meet Him, and would you just settle with stirring the air with the word ‘thank you’. The normal reaction (of a heart that is not egotistic to some extent) – is to meet the benefactor and thank them in person! Find out: who is behind the gift! That is, to seek the person, who by the gift calls for personal (direct) communication (‘Son, give me your heart’, i.e., yourself). The gift has one purpose – to prompt communication beyond space and time, i.e., directly face to face, to break the chains of egotism, to renounce oneself. (What a great feat – trying ‘to give’ with minimal benefit, and even harder – to accept a gift that is burdened with calculation, pride, glorification (Someone said: It is more blessed to give than to receive). Yes, pagans do not know how to give, and they cannot do it themselves (because they are sinful egotists). Only God gives selflessly (and Christians – those who are God’s), and only God accepts selflessly, humbly (and those who are in the Holy Spirit). We have come back to the Eucharist, where real giving, receiving Gifts with grateful love takes place. ‘You are the one who brings the sacrifice and is brought, who accepts and distributes, Christ our God.’ Only in the Eucharist of the Son (the essence of the Church) can we recognize the Giver – the Creator of heaven and earth, the Giver of the Kingdom of Heaven (Himself to us). Christians who live a Eucharistic, parish life are doomed to joy!
Why don’t we rejoice? Because we don’t know how to receive gifts! To receive a gift – is to enter a state of gratitude (which has no end), ‘to thank’ for a gift – is to see the person, the Other, in the gift ‘as’ (not ‘what’; because ‘what’ does not clarify, but unifies: nature is one, but there are many modes of its existence, so we are interested in ‘how’ nature exists, because this ‘how’ points to the person, the unique, singular I of another) to recognize the uniqueness of the other, and the call to communication! We focus specifically on the gift, therefore we thank for the gift, which we use for ourselves, and thus we receive ‘joy’ emotional, soulful, bodily – which does not break the chains of our egotism, but on the contrary, further strengthens the passions, which are nourished by wrongly achieved pleasure (which is an end in itself; pleasure, which is a result of communication of persons in truth (possible only in the Sacrament of the Eucharist), – destroys sinful inflammation of passions!). Such gratitude is deadly, because it gives the right to use the gift for oneself. Such joy quickly passes and it is ungrateful. How many cases are there, when a person does good to another person for a long time, gives gifts (now we are not talking about the goodness of the good deeds and gifts, and the motivations of these ‘good’ deeds – see detailed in Part I.), and the recipient always thanks, even feels something towards that person. But it is enough for the giver for some reason to do something displeasing to the one who has received benefactions for many years (now we are not talking about the quality of the benefactions, but about the principle of ingratitude) – as they immediately hate the benefactor, instantly erase all the good that was, and see only the offense, the pain caused by the benefactor (not fitting into the egotistic desires or doing something unpleasant intentionally or accidentally – the offended does not care, they see only themselves, think only of themselves, and now they have been offended…). This may be a misunderstanding, or human weakness – for a complete (hardened) egotist this is not an argument – pleasure is most important to them, not friendship. So, did such a man thank?! No, he only said the word ‘thank you’: come again, bring more and more! Thank you, thank you, thank you, but behind those sounds there is nothing – just emptiness (void)! How many such empty (void) words do we say to each other every day! And how much do we quarrel, bite each other among our ‘sincere’ – thank you?!