Suffering Mindsets: “Constant and perpetual gratitude in and for everyone and everything, in all circumstances, particularly in afflictions and in sufferings.” An address by Fr. Thomas Hopko (Audio)

[Listening Time: 71 minutes]

As our Research Advisory Board is in the midst of developing new metrics on “Transformative Suffering,” with the first such measure being the Suffering Mindset Scale, we present an address given by Fr. Thomas Hopko on the call to develop a mindset of gratitude.

In fact, as you will see in the opening moments of his talk,

“Gratitude is the Christian life.

In fact, the point will be that gratitude is life. And if a person is ungrateful, then they are dead, that they are not alive;

That the content of the Christian life is constant and perpetual gratitude, in and for everyone and everything, in all circumstances, particularly in afflictions and in sufferings.”

The talk is then divided into two sections: the first half showing “that this is so“; and the second, offered with words from the Fathers, as to “why this is so.”

[And for those of us who are not familiar with Fr. Hopko, he was initially Professor of Dogmatic Theology (succeeding Serge Verkhovskoy) and later Dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. He was the son-in-law of Alexander Schmemann (a prior Dean and private priest to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his exile in the U.S.) and he exerted a great effect of renewal within the Orthodox Church in America.]

Other of his lectures are featured on our site here, including his course on the Nicene Creed as well as a 57-part series on the history of Bishops from the Apostolic period to the 21st century and an exegetical examination of the Names of Jesus.

Enjoy!