There have been no screaming anomalies at Flushing Meadows the past fortnight, for which blessing Adam Helfant, the chairman of the Association of Tennis Professionals, is grateful.
They did this to the point of disregarding church teaching and encouraging "women's ordination, for which Blessed Pope John Paul II stated irrevocably that the church has received no authority from the Lord," Benedict said.
We have a few more now, for which God bless the bosses.
The third blessing for which we ought to be grateful is the remarkably low cost of borrowing and its big corollary, the relatively small numbers of mortgage-holders having their homes repossessed.
That I may live in a calm, orderly way, peace is the blessing for which I pray.
Francis Cardinal Spellman warned that Communists are "digging deep inroads into our nation" and are "trying to grind into dust the blessed freedoms for which our sons have fought, sacrificed, and died".
His account indicates that prior to the battle, Clovis gave gifts to the church and made appeals to St. Martin of Tours, for which he was rewarded with victory, blessed with miracles, and honoured with an imperial consulship by Anastasius I. Recent scholarship has revealed flaws in Gregory's account of Clovis and raised questions about the ultimate purpose of the Histories.
But especially around this time of year, there is one blessing in particular for which I thank my lucky stars.
Today we meditate with Elizabeth and Mary on how hope in the promises of God is itself a blessing of God for which we thank God and through which God works in us.
Even then, he seems to have been blessed with an incapacity for shame, a gift for which he had many occasions to be thankful.
