Is it necessary to thank God? I mean, will he not be annoyed if we continue to thank him for the same thing? I see people praising God during Adoration, listing all the “great and wonderful” works. Why do they do this?

There’s a great line from a prayer of the Mass known as the Preface–named such because it is the prayer that begins the Liturgy of the Eucharist–and I think it will help provide us an answer to this question. This Preface, given the rather simple name of Common Preface IV, says:

For, although you have no need of our praise,

yet our thanksgiving is itself your gift,

since our praises add nothing to your greatness

but profit us for salvation

through Christ our Lord.

These few short lines get right to the heart of why we thank and praise God: they add nothing to God’s greatness, “but profit us for salvation.” We thank God not because he needs to hear us thank him, but because we need to thank him!

Gratitude is a powerful virtue and its value has been recognized both long before and far outside of Christianity. Aesop, the ancient Greek storyteller, called gratitude “the mark of a mature soul.” Gratitude to God is powerful because when we thank God for something, we recognize it as his gift. When I thank God for my life, I’m recognizing God as the one who gave and continually sustains my life. When I thank God for a new job, I am recognizing it as a gift from God. Gratitude leads us to humility, love for God, trust in his providence, and deeper acceptance of my own identity as the Father’s beloved child. That is why thanking and praising God “profits us for salvation!” And God, who only desires our good, has no problem hearing us thank him again and again, even for the same things. He rejoices in this show of our love. We can never thank God enough, because his love for us is beyond measure. When a couple is in love, they never grow tired of expressing their love to one another, even if it’s repeating the same things to one another again and again. How much more so with God, who speaks his love to us unceasingly in the depths of our hearts! We have nothing to fear or doubt when it comes to thanking God–he is always eager to have us grow in relationship with him.