Gratitude of the Ten Lepers
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The Gospel for Thanksgiving Day is about the ten lepers that were healed, but only one thanked Jesus. Now, it can be hard to be grateful in suffering or difficult times, but what is really crazy about us humans, is that we seem to fail to be grateful even in good times. We tend to take the generosity of God and all our blessings for granted.
Look at the ten lepers. They’ve just been healed of a devastating, terminal illness, and yet how many of them remember to go back and say “Thank you”? Just one! That’s it! Something got in the way of their gratitude, and something gets in the way of ours; something makes us forget to say to God “Thank You”, and this failure in gratitude blocks our happiness.
Gratitude refers to both a feeling of appreciation and to a display of thankfulness towards our benefactor – and where the display is absent the feeling will quickly evaporate. In other words, if we stop saying “thank you” to God then our pleasure in the things we’ve been given won’t last. Those who are not thankful soon find everything in life boring or distasteful and they can never be satisfied. Gratitude is necessary for happiness.
What are our obstacles to gratitude?
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For what are you grateful? 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 (we 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 you have heaven waiting for you). God gave all this freely – some of it cost Him a slow, torturous death – just so we could enjoy it.
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 or a note on your phone with a location reminder. It makes a complaining or dissatisfied attitude much harder to justify throughout the day.
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I think the obstacles to thankfulness can be categorized under two headings: a) dissatisfaction with our spiritual condition; b) dissatisfaction with our worldly condition.
Dissatisfaction with our spiritual condition.
On one hand, I am dissatisfied with my spiritual condition. I see my vices of which I am not proud; pride, envy, anger, greed, gluttony, lust. I should be dissatisfied with these because they ruin my happiness and the happiness of those around me and my dissatisfaction with them keeps me from being complacent. I have a heck of a lot of work to do.
But, if we focus too long on our faults, and all we need to do to overcome them we can easily become so discouraged that it prevents us from being aware of just how much God 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?”
We need to do that: focus more on where we would be right now without Jesus and be grateful; and less on how far still we need to go.
Looking at Jesus with Gratitude will carry us farther and faster than constantly looking at all we need to do to be better.
Jesus thank you for carrying me so far already. I know you will carry me the rest of the way.
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The second obstacle to gratitude is Dissatisfaction with our worldly condition.
If we’re always looking for more money or more health or more security or more attention, 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 earthly 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 happiness 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, good food, friends and laughter! As St. Elizabeth Ann Seton exclaimed, “All this, and Heaven too!”
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Let me suggest three 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 the Cross. That event of Jesus thanking the Father is made present in the Mass so that we can join our thanksgiving to that of Jesus. Jesus takes our thanksgiving up into his and perfects it. The Mass, therefore, is an infinite and perfect way to thank God for everything.
The greatest way to thank God is to go to Mass.
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.
St Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:16
Rejoices always
Pray constantly
Give thanks in all circumstances
For this is the will of God for you