Saying Thanks
II Kings
To the church in
the diaspora[1]
& to the
church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia,
alleluia.
A reading from
the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you,
Lord.
As Jesus continued his journey to
The Gospel of the
Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus
Christ.
----------------
Introduction
Thanks at Thanksgiving
For us in the northern
hemisphere, the story of the one leper out of ten who returns to say thanks is
timely. The maple trees are now donning glorious garments of gold. God’s bounty
of apples and pumpkins is being gathered into bins against the long winter
night. Soon our thoughts will turn to
Thanksgiving Day, and we, who nine times out of ten have been too busy to return
to say thanks, will pause on this very
special American holiday to count our blessings as “over the river and through
the woods to grandmother’s house we go.”
Thanks in the old days
Saying thanks came easily in the old days, even though we didn’t enjoy as many blessings then as we do now. Our forefathers planted their crops in early spring, nurtured them through the warm summer months and then in fall gathered their harvest into bins. That yearly round made it easy for them to feel grateful for the simple blessings present even in their frugal lives. It was easy for them to say thanks, and they were saying it much more frequently than we do today. Strangely scarcity and gratitude are brother and sisters It was no surprise, therefore, that sooner or later our forefathers would invent a special holiday for saying thanks.
Thanks today
Even though blessings abound these days, it’s harder now to say thanks. Today when we expend so much physical and psychic energy from Monday to Friday to earn a paycheck, and when there’s no money left over after we’ve paid the rent or mortgage and have bought the weekly groceries and have filled the gas tank, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. When in our illness we approach the healthcare industry with three genuflections, and the first thing it asks us is not how sick we are but how insured we are, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. Nor is it easy to say thanks for a healthcare system which admits us into the hospital at early dawn for brain surgery and hopes to have us out by evening. If rural pilgrims had not invented Thanksgiving Day, and if that had been left up to us urbanites today, it probably would still be waiting to be invented.
It’s hard to count your
blessings in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere. That’s an atmosphere in which
nothing is free and everything costs. Some of us remember the old days when we
could get free soup bones at the corner butcher shop and free lunches of rye
bread, cheese, sausage, and herring at the local tavern. Today we pay for absolutely everything, and,
when we pay for absolutely everything, then nothing is gift. And when nothing
is gift, there’s simply not much reason to say thanks.
That staunch demand for
payment, that ever-hovering cloud of transaction which hangs over us all week
long eventually creeps up into the more spiritual realms of our lives. Before
we know it, we’re transacting with our spouses, kids, parents, brothers and
sisters. Before we know it, we’re making others pay up before we love them. The
only one left who’s not in a transactional mode is our dog who loves us unconditionally
and reminds us that God loves us the same way. The only one left to whom we
find ourselves saying thanks in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere is the
family dog.
Jesus’ gratifying experiences of Samaritans
As Jesus and his disciples were making their way
toward
On another occasion Jesus and his disciples were journeying
through
When the conversation opened, it was the
woman who had cool clear water to offer Jesus, and it was the Lord who was
thirsty and asking for some to drink. When
it ended, it was Jesus who had cool clear water to offer, and it was the woman
who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. Jesus offered her “a spring of
water welling up to eternal life.” She drank deeply of it and was converted from her
meandering life (Jn 4:5-42). That was another gratifying experience with a despised
Samaritan which Jesus never forgot.
A parable
about his experiences of Samaritan
It was no wonder then that sooner or later Jesus
would craft an immortal parable in which the hero would not be a fellow Jew but
a despised Samaritan. Once upon a time a man was going from
A story about ingratitude
When Jesus came upon ten
lepers, he cured them all. Only one of the ten returned to say thanks. This gospel story is obviously about
gratitude, and we will tell it again at Mass on Thanksgiving Day, November 22nd.
But it’s also (and perhaps even more) a story
about ingratitude (or at least non-gratitude), for nine out of the ten cured
lepers did not return to say thanks. That’s not a good percentage.
We don’t know why the nine did not return to say
thanks. Maybe some of them were simply ungrateful pups who think that whatever
good befalls them is their just desserts. Such people never say thanks. Maybe some
were so overwhelmed with joy at their cure that they went back into society and
celebrated with old friends and simply forgot to return to say thanks. All we
know for sure is that nine out of ten did not return to say thanks. Does it
reflect an all-too-human statistic that out of ten
opportunities or moments in our lives calling us to say thanks we probably fail
nine times to say it?
The challenge to count
one’s blessings
Right now I am in a kind of negative or almost depressed mode. After living for twenty eight years in a very nice house into which I invested much of myself, circumstances force me now to move out of the inner city. (Someone has said there are three woes in life: divorce, death and moving! Yes, indeed!) At this traumatic moment, I think of all I shall have to leave behind. I think of my cloistered backyard with its shrine of St. Francis. I think of the solitary silver maple tree which I planted in dead winter ten years ago, and which has now burgeoned into the cloister’s central gem. I think of the attic transformed into a wonderful Shangri La with a cozy gas fireplace to warm my cold bones in the dead of winter and to help me forget that I am living in the inner city. The impending move is a traumatic moment for me. It sets me counting my many woes.
But it is also a profound moment for me. It challenges me to count also my many blessings. For blessings there are. Blessings like being able to move out of the inner city, while there are many who would like to move out but cannot. Blessings like having countless friends who in different ways and with much concern are helping me to make the move. It’s a profound moment challenging me to count my many blessings, and I hope I can do it as well as the little old lady whose story was related to me in the following e-mail.
A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, fully
dressed each morning by
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied.
“Happiness and her sister gratitude are something you decide on ahead of time.
Whether I say thanks for my room or not doesn’t depend on what kind of
furniture is in it or how it is arranged.
It’s what’s in my mind and how it is arranged there that counts. I have already decided to be grateful for my
room. It’s a decision I make every
morning when I wake up. I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed bemoaning
the difficulties I have with parts of my body that don’t work, or I can get out
of bed and give thanks for the ones that do. My recipe for joy and also for a
long life is this: a) free your heart
from hate; b) free your mind from worry; c) live simply; d) and learn to count
your blessings.”
Conclusion
Feel it and say it
Jesus cured ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks. Every Mass has a dismissal. Go the Mass is ended. Go and return to say thanks. It’s not enough just to feel thanks, we must also say thanks. Just don’t feel thanks to the clerk at the counter who has met you as a human being and has been very pleasant and very helpful. Say thanks to the clerk. Give her a little speech that says thanks. It can be ever so brief. It can be as brief as the one-liner of a gentleman who said to me as he was passing out of church, “Your mother should have had triplets!” I received that very unique way of saying thanks down deep within myself, and it lit me up.
Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your spouse who goes forth every day to bring home the bacon, or who stays home everyday to take care of the kids and keep house and cook supper. Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your parents who, though they never do a perfect job of parenting, are always wondering how they can do better.
Saying
thanks blesses everyone. The gentleman who wished my mother would have had
triplets had, indeed, blessed me. But his unique words of thanks returned to bless
him as well, for they planted a radiant glow not only on my face but on his as
well. The leper’s words of thanks put a glow on the face of Jesus. But they
also returned to light up the face of the leper himself as the Lord said to him, "Stand
up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:19).