The first part of this series focused on right speech as a key to living the Gospel as a way of life, as the book by James R. Jones and Gabriel Meyer is called. I continue this series of reflections on the principles of life in community. The second principle offered by Jones and Meyer is “gratitude”.
Last weekend, I preached about three words that characterize our relationship with God and with each other: “thanks”, “sorry”, and “please”. These words can be the starting point for a deep prayer life but are also accessible to even the smallest children. But “thanks” is first for a reason.
In the Examen of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the first step is gratitude. The person praying stops to become aware that everything is given by God, that God is giving him or her life in that very moment. Breathing in and breathing out, the beat of the heart, the awareness of the body—all these things are a gift. We do not make ourselves, and so the response to being is gratitude. Jones and Meyer write that “one will never see one’s life for what it really is until one is prepared to be grateful for it.”
But how can gratitude also be a hallmark of the life of a community? What does it mean to have a culture of gratitude?
The word gratitude is linked in many languages to the word “grace”. In fact, the word for grace and thanks in Spanish is “gracias”. We recognize that something is given free, “gratis”. The grace that we receive is not meant for us alone; each of us have been given “charisms” which comes from the Greek word “charis” which means “grace”. Gratitude as a cultural marker means that first and foremost we recognize the community as a gift, as a grace, as something freely offered to us by God. How might my life change if I recognized the other people in my life as gifts and signs of God’s love for me? How might my life change if I recognized difference in the community as the difference of charisms and gifts for the building up of the community?
Thank God we are not all the same! With gratitude, difference becomes an opportunity to recognize God at work beyond our control. We can thank God for the different gifts that make up our community, and then difference does not cause division but rather communion.
The great Thanksgiving of God’s family and of every true Christian community is the Eucharist. Can we notice the word “charis” / “grace” in the word Eucharist? The prefix eu- just means “good”. The gathering of God’s family, especially on Sunday the Lord’s Day, is the time to recognize the greatest gift of all: Christ’s Death and Resurrection. Gathered around the altar / table, we are drawn into communion with Jesus in His offering to the Father. Drawn to Jesus, we are also drawn to each other. Sunday Eucharist is necessary for a community of faith. As the early Christians said, “We cannot live without Sunday.”
Sunday Eucharist then spills over into a Eucharistic way of life. Gratitude marks relationships that are built on the graciousness of God. This gratitude expresses itself, according to our authors, in respect and service. Respect, as Father Giussani teaches, means to look, “spectare”, again re-: in respect, I look again at the one in front of me and see in him or her the gift of God, the giver of all good things. How beautiful it is to stop and look again at those we might have got used to seeing! Respect makes it impossible for familiarity to breed contempt.
Service begins not from our own strength or our own desire to change the world and those around us. It quickly becomes exhausting and frustrating if this is the only reason we serve. Service flows from gratitude: as I have been given, so I give.
I am struck on this last point by the role that imagination plays in a love that is rooted in gratitude. Just think of God’s imagination in the way He decided to “deliver” His grace to us. The biblical story is a great adventure. The lives of the saints are great adventures. Our individual stories of grace are great adventures in which God continues to surprise us. Maybe we too can surprise each other in the way we respect and serve each other. Hear again what Jones and Meyer have to say:
Isn’t it strange that, as a Christian people, we’ve spent centuries using our imaginations to paint icons, build cathedrals, and create music to express our faith, but rarely use that same imaginative capacity to love other people, to extend and enhance Christian moral culture? Love and gratitude are not just principles and demands. They’re also about imagination and creativity.
“Cathedrals of gratitude”: what an amazing way to think about our communities and parishes! What amazing things we could build in the name of gratitude!