Me? Grateful?

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'll be posting some pictures from our Thanksgiving soon, but I'd love to see some of yours!

If you've read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, you may recall a certain scene in which Corrie's sister expresses gratitude to God for a lice infestation. Corrie could not bring herself to be grateful for the pests until time showed how much of a blessing they were. (For those who have not read The Hiding Place, it is the story of how Corrie and her family were sent to concentration camps due to the fact that they hid Jews. In the above mentioned episode, the presence of lice in the camps allowed the prisoners to pray in their bunks as the guards did not want to get lice.)

Although I read the book almost ten years ago, this incident has always been retained in my memory. It seems appropriate to recall on this Thanksgiving weekend. Sadly, I am often one of those people who "never wants a drink of water until the well runs dry." Oftentimes it takes not having something for me to appreciate its value...or like Corrie: fail to be grateful for something until I have proof of its value.

Gratitude is integral to Catholicism, yet I wonder, is this sort of "Now I see now how good that was. Can I have it back?" mentality true gratitude?

Upon reading St. Paul's query, "What have you that you have not received?" and St. Therese of Lisieux's simple statement, "Everything is grace" it is quite apparent that the aforementioned approach is not correct.

So, what really constitutes gratitude? 

I am no spiritual scholar, but I would hazard to say that the virtue of gratitude is one that is integrally tied to humility.

A professor of mine once described humility as being the acknowledgement of the truth. How simple this is, yet how hard it is to be truly humble! Through it one can see that everything is given by God our loving Father. Indeed we are nothing by ourselves--in fact, our being itself is a gift.
This humble acknowledgement of our nothingness then leads to the joyful praise of the goodness of God-- gratitude.

While it is often easy to sit and make resolutions,  we all know that growing in virtue involves more than just thinking about growing. (And truly, it involves more than just ourselves... God's grace is a must!)

How, then, can one grow in gratitude?


Let us look Psalm 116. This particular psalm is one that is sometimes said as a preparation for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The whole psalm is beautiful, but two of the verses reveal the "secret" to growing in gratitude:

12     How can I repay the LORD

for all the great good done for me?

13I will raise the cup of salvation

and call on the name of the LORD.

The psalmist was not referring to the Mass when he mentioned "the cup of salvation", but what fits his description more than the re--presentation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary? Here we encounter the interminable goodness and humility of God in the Eucharist. And how fitting that the word "Eucharist" means "thanksgiving"!

St. Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi demonstrates how we can grow in gratitude (and all virtues) when she writes,

"All graces are contained in you, O Jesus in the Eucharist, our celestial Food! What more can a soul wish when it has within itself the One who contains everything?....What more can I want or desire, if all the virtues, graces, and gifts for which I long, are found in you, O Lord, who are as truly present under the sacramental species as you are in heaven, at the right hand of the Father?..."

Not only can we grow in gratitude through our reception of the Eucharist, but what would be more ungrateful than to avoid God's great gift of himself in the Eucharist?


Do you have any tips on growing in gratitude?