A Christian's Life is a Life of Gratitude

My Homily for 28^th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C 2013

Introduction

Teaching children to say “thank you,” is something mothers always do.  Why then is there so much ingratitude in the world today, like the nine lepers in today’s gospel, who fail to give thanks to God, despite the great miracle they have received?  Let me suggest two main causes: self-sufficiency and entitlement.

Scripture and Theology

There was a dad who, on getting a significant raise at work, decided to take his family out to a nice restaurant.  When the food arrived, the parents asked their five-year old son to say grace, as he usually did at home.  But he, let’s call him Kyle, stubbornly refused despite the urging of his mom and dad.  And when asked why, this is what he said: “You see, at home I say grace because God gives us the food and we must thank him; here at the restaurant we don’t need to thank God for the food, because daddy is going to pay for it.”

Like little Kyle, sometimes we fail to see God as the source of our blessings; we attribute them to our own efforts.  For example, if we do well in school, we think it is because of our own smarts or hard work or both.  Or if we are successful in business or in our careers, again we might attribute it to just our own work, with God playing no part in it.  Even the success of our marriage, the hardworking husband, the gorgeous wife, the angelic children – we think of them as the fruits of our own labours, nothing to do with God at all.  And so because we don’t see God’s role in our lives, we see no reason to thank him.  Perhaps those nine lepers too, did not realize that the healing they had received at the hands of this teaching from Nazareth, was healing from God himself.

But at other times, we refuse to thank God, even when we know that he is the source of our blessings, like Maggie, the older sister of little Kyle.  Her hard working parents have saved up quite a bit to send her to a really good college: tuition, room and board, all paid up without her having to take out any loans.  Mom and dad drive her up to college, set her up in her dorm room and return home.  One week goes by, another week, then a month goes by, but they do not hear from their daughter.  There is no letter or card – of course nobody writes those anymore – no phone call, no email, not even a text message from her to say these simple words: “Thank you mom and dad.”  And when they visit her a few months later and bring up this matter, she tells them that paying for her to go to college is their duty.  Why should she thank them for doing their job?

Don’t we sometimes, like Maggie, feel entitled to the blessings God gives us and see no reason to thank him? “Why should I thank him, when it is his duty to protect me from illness, give me wealth and give me a good life?”  Did you notice that in both the gospel and the first reading, it is the foreigners, the non-Jews, who return to give thanks to God?  On being healed, Naaman, the Syrian General, insists on thanking the Prophet and God in a big way.  In the gospel, the one leper who returned was a Samaritan.  Probably because they are foreigners, they don’t take God’s help for granted; they really appreciate it.

And so, like the nine lepers in the gospel, sometimes we are ungrateful to God, either because like little Kyle at the restaurant, we fail to see God’s hand in our lives, or like Maggie at college we see his hand at work in our lives, but because of entitlement, we take his help for granted.

Christian Life

But the Christian life, as today’s readings remind us, is a life of constant gratitude to God.  And there are two main ways to thank God: with words and with action.

You might remember that in the gospel, the Samaritan leper returned to Jesus “glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.”  Like his mother taught him to say, he returned to say “Thank you” to Jesus and to God for the great gift of healing and life, he received.

Because the words of sinful human beings are not a worthy response to the God for creating us and redeeming us from damnation, Jesus gave us something worthwhile, with which to say “thank you” to God.  He left us the Eucharist, in which we thank the Father not just with our own feeble words, but with the words of Jesus himself, and most importantly, with the body and blood of Jesus himself. It is like a child who buys his mom or dad a birthday gift, with the very allowance the parents gave the child.  In fact, not only does the word Eucharist mean “Thanksgiving,” but in the Eucharist, we are constantly giving thanks to God.

• Starting in the Gloria we say, “We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you and we give you thanks for your great glory.”
• At the end of each reading again we say: “Thanks be to God.”
• As we begin the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest invites us “Lift up your hearts,” to which we reply, “We lift them up to the Lord.”  And then he invites us: “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” to which we reply, “it is right and just.” And then the priest launches into this long Eucharistic Prayer thanking God for all the great things he has done for us.
• After the priest has prayed over the bread and wine, he says: “We offer you, Lord, the Bread of Life and the Chalice of salvation, giving thanks that you have held us worthy to be in your presence and minister to you.”
• And then at the end of Mass, the priest dismisses us, telling us to go forth and glorify the Lord with our lives.  To this we reply: “Thanks be to God.”

And so, we might want to think of attending Mass as not an obligation to fulfill, but our weekly way of of saying thank you to God for his goodness to us.

But our thanks must also be in action.  Our whole lives must be lives of thanksgiving.  In fact, thanking God and others, should be second nature to us, infecting every aspect of our lives, so that we do not for one moment think of ourselves as self-sufficient or entitled to anything, material or spiritual.

There is a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan that shows us how to live lives of gratitude.  As you probably remember, this movie is about a group of soldiers during World War II, sent to save private James Ryan who has already lost two of his brothers to the war.  Many of these men die in the process of saving him, including their leader Captain Miller who just before he dies tells the rescued Ryan, “James.  Earn this . . . earn it.”

James seems to have taken these last words very seriously.  In this particular scene, now he is an old man who has returned to Europe to the cemetery where Captain Miller is buried.  Staring at the grave marker he mumbles to his dead commander telling Captain Miller that every day of his life he has thought of Miller’s dying words.  He has tried to live a good life, at least he hopes he has.  He hopes he has earned the sacrifice of their lives that Captain Miller and his men made for him.

But James is not really sure.  He wonders how any life, however well lived, could be worth the sacrifice of all those men.  Now wobbly on his feet he stands up, but does not feel released.  Trembling and filled with anxiety he turns to his wife and pleads to her, “Tell me I’ve led a good life.”  Confused by his request, she asks: “What?”  He has to know the answer, so he asks her again: “Tell me I’m a good man.”  Finally she responds to him and says: “Yes you are.”

Conclusion

Jesus gave up his life, so that when you and I die, we too might be admitted to heaven rather than hell.  Do we thank him with our words for this great gift?  Even better, do we thank him in action, by living a good life, where every day, is a day of thanksgiving, where everything we do, we do in gratitude, so that before our last breath, we can say, “Yes, my life has been worth the sacrifice of Jesus.”