Gratitude
“He fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.” (Luke 11:17)
In some parts of Mexico hot springs and cold springs are found side by side. Because of the convenience of this natural phenomenon local women often bring their laundry and boil their clothes in the hot springs; then rinse them in the cold ones. A tourist, who was watching this procedure commented to his Mexican friend and guide: “I imagine that they think Mother Nature is pretty generous to supply such ample, clean hot and cold water here side by side for their free use.” The guide replied, “No senor, there is much grumbling because she supplies no soap.”
Rather than thanking God for the blessings they have, the local women complained about the one they didn’t have. Experience shows that the more often and more regularly we receive a blessing like good health or plenty to eat, the less likely we are to be aware of it. What is continuously given, in other words, is easily taken for granted.
“I have often thought,” Helen Keller wrote, “that it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during their adult life. Darkness would make that person more appreciative of light; silence would teach that person the joys of sound.” Too often, unfortunately, it takes a serious threat to our blessings like illness or a job loss to make us aware of them.
We hear and say the word “thanks” fairly often, though perhaps not often enough and usually without much thought. Today is Thanksgiving, our most popular national holiday (except, of course, for turkeys!), yet few of us recognize and acknowledge the religious dimension of the day. Once we concede, however, that without God we are and have nothing, our obligation to thank God becomes apparent. Today’s Scripture readings help us to understand better the rich biblical concept of thanksgiving.
In the first reading Sirach, a Jewish teacher who lived two hundred years before Christ, declares that because it’s God who creates everything, who gives life, nurtures and shapes us, we’re all duty bound to respond in gratitude. The Hebrew word hodah, generally translated as “give thanks,” means “confess, profess or state publicly.” In the Bible, to give thanks means to state publicly that at this very moment God is at work. The moment could be the creation of the world or ancient Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Or it could be my avoidance of danger or your recovery from illness. Thanksgiving in the Bible, therefore, is directed to God, involves a public profession and is profoundly religious.
This attitude of gratitude is reflected in the second reading from Paul who writing to believers in Corinth says: “I continually thank my God for you because of the favor he has bestowed on you in Christ Jesus, in whom you have been richly endowed with every gift of speech and knowledge….”
The biblical concept of thanksgiving as public witness to God’s action is also prominent in today’s gospel-- Luke’s account of the cleansing of the ten lepers. Their healing takes place during Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. Ten persons suffering from infectious skin conditions, which kept them isolated from the general population, approach Jesus crying out, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” When Jesus tells them to show themselves to the priests (who, according to the Book of Leviticus, would provide the verification of their healing needed before they could return to normal life within the community), they go on their way. That action took great faith, since there had been no explicit healing action or word from Jesus. They believed in Jesus’ power to heal, and, in fact, on their way the ten found themselves to have been miraculously healed.
End of story. Not quite. Only one of the healed lepers returns to Jesus to give public witness to God about his healing. And that one was the one least expected by a Jewish audience to do so, since he was a Samaritan, an outsider, a persona non grata in Judean society. So Jesus asks, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
The popular media have reduced the Thanksgiving holiday to football, turkey and sentimental family scenes alla Norman Rockwell. These things are fine in themselves, but they tend to obscure the real meaning of thanksgiving as profoundly religious and deeply spiritual. In the biblical context thanksgiving begins with an acknowledgement of God’s actions in our world and on our behalf. In thanking God we proclaim publicly who God is (our creator, redeemer and sustainer), who we are (God’s servants) and what God has done for us individually and collectively. The word “Eucharist” means thanksgiving. When we celebrate the Eucharist, as we do today, we proclaim God’s mighty acts on our behalf, especially in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
Gratitude at its highest, however, goes beyond counting blessings. It leads not only to a sense of thankful dependence on God but also to an awareness of our duty to others. It takes us beyond saying thanks to giving thanks. We are not truly grateful for our blessings, you see, until we make it possible for others to experience gratitude for blessings as well, which explains why, scripturally speaking, helping another in need isn’t an act of charity; it’s an act of justice.
The devotional book Springs in the Valley tells the story of a man who found a barn where Satan kept his seeds ready to be sown in the human heart. He found that the seeds of discouragement were more numerous than the others and learned that those seeds could be made to grow almost anywhere. But when Satan was questioned, he reluctantly admitted that there was one place in which he could never get them to thrive. “And where is that?” asked the man. Satan replied sadly, “In the heart of a grateful person.”
If we thanked God for all the good things in our lives, there wouldn’t be time to complain about the not so good. Happy Thanksgiving.
Anthony J. Sciolino
Sirach 50:22-24
Corinthians 1:3-9;
Luke 17:11-19.
Thanksgiving Day. November 22, 2007. (Cycle C)