Gratitude Flows from Contemplating the Truth
The Contemplation of Divine
Thomas Aquinas wrote that the greatest of all pleasures consists in the contemplation of truth. Now every pleasure assuages pain as stated above: hence the contemplation of truth assuages pain or sorrow, and the more so the more perfectly one is a lover of wisdom. And therefore in the midst of tribulations men rejoice in the contemplation of Divine things and of future Happiness.[1]
So the act of careful reflection on ultimate truth is pleasing, and the truth God has revealed enhances that pleasure immeasurably. Furthermore, the only adequate response to a consideration of the goodness of God, and to His boundless extravagance towards us is gratitude.
Gratitude can refer either to a feeling of appreciation or to a display towards our benefactor – and where the display is absent the feeling will quickly evaporate. In other words, when you stop saying “thank you,” your pleasure in the things you’ve been given won’t last.
What have you been given? Well, of course, there’s what we all have in common: goods of the body (life, food, clean water, a roof over your head, safety and security); goods of the mind (friends and books and music and memory); and goods of the spirit (you have God’s divine life dwelling within you making you truly a son or daughter of God, a partaker in the divine nature, you have a knowledge of the Father’s love, and the prospect of heaven). God gave all this freely – some of it cost Him a slow, torturous death – just so we could enjoy it.
Plan For Gratitude
But here’s a first suggestion for cultivating gratitude: make your own list. Many of us, when we hear the phrase “count your blessings,” count like a toddler – we maybe thank God for three or four things, and then we quit. Try this instead: take half an hour and a pen and a piece of paper and write down the top twenty or thirty things you’re most grateful for. Then hang on to that list for a while. Keep it in your purse, or your pocket. I’ve done this with a lot of groups, and I always find it makes a complaining or self-pitying attitude much harder to justify throughout the day.
Dissatisfaction with Our Soul
Since we tend not to be grateful, we don’t acknowledge our gifts or say “thank you.” This is, according to Aquinas, a failure in justice: we owe God an explicit recognition of His divine generosity. So why do we fail? What are the primary sources of ingratitude?
I think the obstacles to habitual thankfulness can be categorized under two headings: a) dissatisfaction with our spiritual condition; b) dissatisfaction with our worldly condition.
Dissatisfaction with our spiritual condition. Of course, in one respect, dissatisfaction with our spiritual condition might be interpreted as the proper guard against self-complacency. We do have a lot of work to do in getting rid of vice and being more conformed to Christ, and there’s no sense denying it. On the other hand, focus on our own faults can easily become so consuming that it prevents a more primordial awareness of how much the Lord has done for us – and for the world – already.
Think about the ten lepers who were healed. Only one of them came back to thank Jesus, and His disappointment is obvious, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” (Luke 17:18). I bet I know what was going through the minds of the other nine: yes, they’d been cleansed of leprosy, but now they really had a lot to get done. They’d been outcasts, completely excluded from social life – they’d have to get in touch with their families, see if their old jobs were available, figure out if they could reclaim their lands, or fix up their former houses. Imagine if you’d been away from home and work and family for who knows how long, and then in a moment you were thrown back into the world you’d thought was gone forever. You’d have a lot on your mind too.
But one of them realized that “what do I need to fix right now?” was secondary to “where would I be right now without Jesus?” Unless we realize on the spiritual plane what the Samaritan understood on the worldly plane, we’ll never manage to make gratitude the center of our lives.
Dissatisfaction with Our World
Dissatisfaction with our worldly condition. If we’re always looking for more money or more health or more security or more praise, we won’t be grateful. If we say “I just need to make it through today, or to the weekend, or the end of the semester, or the next couple years” or “I just need to get a job, or a house, or make it to retirement” or “I just need to get the kids to bed, or get the kids ready for school, or get the kids to college, or get the kids through college,” – as though achieving any of those things would bring us peace and contentment, we won’t be grateful.
Dissatisfaction with our temporal condition means just one thing: we’ve forgotten about heaven. When you forget about heaven, you try desperately to make this life perfect and then get frustrated when it isn’t.
On the other hand, the prospect of heaven frames everything differently, and balances eternal bliss against a few moments or years of suffering. Aquinas said: “In the midst of tribulations men rejoice in the contemplation of Divine things and of future Happiness.” How can you complain about some unpleasantness down here when trillions and trillions of years of unspeakably joy are just down the road?
And besides, when you remember heaven is waiting, it gives even more gratitude for the myriad of good things down here. This world is just the waiting room, where you stay for a while before going into the party room. And we’re used to unpleasant, uncomfortable waiting rooms. If this was a cinder-block waiting room, a cinder-block world, we’d have no reason to whine about it – we’re just waiting to get into the party room. But as it is, what a waiting room! Blue skies and hot drinks and laughter! As St. Elizabeth Ann Seton exclaimed, “All this, and Heaven too!”
Two Practices for Gratitude
Let me suggest two practices for growing in gratitude and happiness.
First, the greatest way to thank God is to go to Mass and receive the Eucharist. Eucharist literally means a sacrifice of Thanksgiving. Jesus offered an infinite and perfect act of Thanksgiving when he offered Himself to the Father at the Last Supper and on Calvary. That event of Jesus thanking the Father is made present in the Mass so that we can join our thanksgiving to that of Jesus. In this way, Jesus takes our thanksgiving up into his and perfects it. The Mass, therefore, is an infinite and perfect way to thank God for everything.
Secondly, begin your time in prayer every day by thanking God for as many things that come to mind in 2-3 minutes. This sets the trajectory of your prayer and the attitude of your whole day.