Gratitude is a wonderful quality and is highly valued in our relationships with friends. No one wants to have anything to do with an ungrateful person. Deep ingratitude separates people, introduces distrust and hostility into interpersonal relationships. If gratitude is so important and valued in relationships, then gratitude to God is even more essential. The Apostle Paul encourages us in this regard: “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:18). We are called to constantly thank God for everything, thanking Him, as Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk says, “more frequently than we take breath.”
“The more grateful a person is, the closer he is to perfection, and therefore to God,” is the saying of the holy Bishop Nikolaj of Ohrid, Žiča and Lelić. The same saint emphasizes that “in this world, only in man does gratitude acquire its true divine radiance”.
“In everything give thanks to the Lord!” — this instruction of the Apostle Paul has become a kind of a New Testament commandment. Saint Bishop Nicholas looks upon gratitude, in showing us the path to Christian perfection. Spiritual life means always moving forward and developing the best qualities and abilities in us. This also includes gratitude (thanksgiving).
We need to give thanks to God not only for granting us life along with everything we need, including our health and talents, nor solely for His blessings, but also for everything that occurs in our lives as a result of His love and permission. True Christians know how to view life in the right way, “for those who live according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:5), and therefore they find within themselves the spiritual strength to always, in every situation, say: “Glory to God for all things.”
The righteous Job at one point lost everything and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as the Lord pleased, so it was. Blessed be the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:21). Gratitude brings us closer to God and brings peace and joy to the soul. Saint Chrysostom speaks about this: “Has something good happened? Bless God, and it will remain good. Has something bad happened? Bless God, and it will cease to be bad.”
“Not only the healthy, but also the sick should give thanks; not only those who are rich, but also those who suffer hardships. There is nothing surprising in gratitude when a favourable wind blows for us. But when a strong storm occurs, the ship capsizes and we are in danger, then gratitude serves as a great proof of patience and gratitude,” Saint John Chrysostom teaches us.
It has been ten years since the Lord has called us and inspired us to the blessed obedience of missionary work using modern information technologies. Walking the Internet roads and sowing the seeds of the Gospel is equal to the apostolic work requiring perseverance, sacrifice and clear spiritual vision from modern missionaries, thanks to which our cultivation of the spiritual Vineyard of the Lord will be fruitful.
In these past ten years, the “Riznica” (“Treasury”) portal has become a place of unity and love, a place where we draw strength from the spiritual treasury of sacramental theology and the liturgical life as a whole. The “Treasury” portal has become an online pulpit from which the Lord’s teaching is preached with the aim of providing answers to all the pressing questions that modern man asks on a daily basis. “Treasury” is a portal that in a short time has become a favourite online catechism reference, helping raise the young generations, including high school and college students. „Treasury“ is a website similar to a spiritual meadow from which numerous clergymen pick fragrant flowers in the form of spiritually edifying teachings, preparing their sermons to deliver before the liturgical community entrusted to them. The „Treasury“ portal is a missionary undertaking that has gathered workers from different media outlets in one place, calling them to a joint mission that leads to the same goal.
Today, in the 2026th year of our Lord, in the spirit of the decade long existence of the „Treasury“ portal, we offer our gratitude to the Lord for all things! We thank our intercessory patron, protector and inspirer, Saint John the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord, on the day of whose honourable birth our portal began its work. We thank His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and the numerous hierarchs, abbots, presbyters and spiritual fathers who have actively manifested their love for this blessed work in different ways. We also thank the editorial staff of the church media for their cooperation in the mission, in particular, the editorial staff of Hram Television, Radio-Beseda of the Diocese of Bačka, Radio-Glas of the Diocese of Niš, Radio-Istochnik of the Diocese of Valjevo, Radio-Zlatousta of the Diocese of Šumadija, the Information Services of the Diocese of Bačka and the Diocese of Zvornik-Tuzla, as well as the magazines Vinograd Gospodnji of the Diocese of Bačka, Svevidje of the Diocese of Budimlje-Nikšić, and Žički Blagovesnik of the Diocese of Žička.
In cooperation with the missionary portal „Kinonia“ at the Missionary Department of the Archbishopric of Belgrade-Karlovci, on the occasion of the ten-year anniversary of the portal „Treasury“, during the month of July 2026 of the year of our Lord, a special series of texts dedicated to the decade long existence of the „Treasury“ has been put together. The best of our team contributed to the anniversary series. All the submitted texts testify to the love that the authors offered. Great is the Lord and great is His love, because He has gathered into one community those He has honoured to serve Him in this way. For their participation in the anniversary series, we would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude and love to: Jana Okilj, Aleksandra Mijailović, Katarina Marjanović, Nađa Pekić, Tijana Stamenović, Nikoleta Vračević, Svjetlana Samardžija, Nikolina Kovačević, Marija Petrović, Jelena Delibašić, Nevena Milosavljević, Sara Dimitrijević, Sara Popović, Danijela Marković, as well as Jadranka Janković.
We crown this letter of thanks with words from the hymn of Saint Ambrose: We praise You, God, we confess You, the Lord, the whole earth glorifies You, the eternal Father. To You all the angels, to You the heavens and all the powers, to You the cherubim and seraphim cry out in unceasing voices: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of Your glory!
WRITTEN BY: Catechist Branislav Ilić, editor of the portal “Kinonia”
*The text was published on the portal Kinonia in the section “From the Editor’s Pen”, July 31, 2026.
