Gratitude

With the recent holiday season and advent of a fresh new year, I am reminded of the importance of gratitude as a vital part of my character.

This goes further than simply saying that I ought to be "thankful" for everything in life.  Instead, I am interested in the virtue of gratitude and what it entails. In particular, how it follows from humility and how it is a precursor for forgiveness.

Gratitude is a vital virtue. It is fundamental to holiness.  Rev. Ronald Rolhesier, OMI expresses that "at the age 75 you need to only have one word left in your spiritual vocabulary, gratitude, and that maturity is attained precisely at that moment when gratitude begins to drown out and cauterize the hurts in your life...Just as smoke follows fire, forgiveness follows gratitude. Gratitude ultimately undergirds and fuels all genuine virtue, is the real basis of holiness, and the source of love itself."  - Taken from June 3, 2011 issue of the Tidings 

While I agree with the Reverend, I would like to add that humility alone precedes even this virtue and allows for the development of gratitude.

One example that I think illustrates this clearly is "pickiness".  When I go over to somebody's house and refuse to eat what they have prepared for me, or pick around everything, it is because not only am I not truly thankful for the hospitality, but I lack a certain humility. It is pride that says, "I refuse to eat this." Pickiness that comes simply from the will, I believe is prideful.   

Another example of pride is not thanking a gift-giver, host, the person who opens the door for me at the mall, etc... While the latter is obviously a tiny sign of ingratitude, or unthoughtful behavior, I think that even this minute lack of action stems from pride: "that person is not worth the time it will take me to give an expression of gratitude to."

We are all called to a twofold charity: love of God and love of neighbor. What is love of neighbor? At its most basic, I think it is acknowledging the existence of the people around us in a positive way.  If this is so, and if not acknowledging a person when I encounter him is a sin against charity, then failing to be grateful to someone who has extended himself for me is a sin against gratitude. I heard a priest once say in a homily that the one sin that is rarely confessed is the sin of omission, that is, for all the good things failed, forgot or deliberately avoided.

The reason that the virtue of gratitude is acquired by being humble is because in humility, I realize that I am not owed anything (click here). Gratitude is anti-cultural as it goes against the highly individualistic attitude of "my life is all about me" and "these are all my rights".  Once this attitude is dropped, I am more able to accept everything as a grace, a gift, as opposed to "what is owed to me". 

With true humility, gratitude no longer is forced: "ok, let me stop and count my blessings";  instead it is lived. Counting the blessing occurs as the blessing happens. This awareness that everything is a gift, provides more joy in my soul and provides true peace.

Forgiveness follows from this because the awareness that I am really nothing, enables me to see that I am not better than my neighbor. "Yes, his offense against me was hurtful, but I am not better than him. I have hurt others also." If, I wish for the gift of forgiveness for my errors, I realize I must also give it.  The more humble I am, the more grateful I become, and it becomes easier and easier to forgive.

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Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.
— Aesop (620-550 BC), Androcles

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC), Pro Plancio (54 BC)  

If I only have the will to be grateful, I am so.
— Seneca (8 BC-65 AD) 

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.
— Saint Ambrose (340-397 AD), De Spiritu Sancto

And as it is the most generous souls who have most gratitude, it is those who have most pride, and who are most base and infirm, who most allow themselves to be carried away by anger and hatred.
— René Descartes (1596-1650), Passions of the Soul (1649), CCI  

Thanksgiving is good but thanks-living is better.
— Matthew Henry (1662-1714)  

He enjoys much who is thankful for little; a grateful mind is both a great and a happy mind.
— Thomas Secker (1693-1768), Archbishop of Cantebury  

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
— Samuel Johnson (1709-1784),
     Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides (1785) [Sept. 20, 1773]  

If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our father in heaven.
— Hosea Ballou (1771-1852)  

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.
— Henry Clay (1777-1852) 

Postal officials say that before Christmas they receive tons of letters written to Santa Claus, but after Christmas how few letters of thanks are sent to him! From childhood onward, human beings seem to be characterized by thanklessness.
— Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)   

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soul out of which thanks naturally grows, A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he gives.
— Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)  

Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road.
— John Henry Jowett (1864-1923)  

A true Christian is a man who never for a moment forgets what God has done for him in Christ and whose whole comportment and whose activity have their root in the sentiment of gratitude.
— Jacques Maritain (1886-1960), A Diary of Private Prayer (1936)  

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
— Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), Reflections On The Human Condition (1973)  

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001), Listen! the Wind (1938), Ch. 19  

The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy.
— Mother Teresa (1910-1997)  

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say "thank you?"
— William A. Ward (1921-1994)  

http://www.wisdomportal.com/Gratitude/Gratitude-Quotes.html