With faith comes gratitude. With entitlement comes a pound of flesh. Today’s 1st Reading and Gospel give us pause to reflect on the attitude that we may want to embrace. Last Sunday’s focus was on faith. Appropriately, this Sunday, we turn to gratitude.
The background of both the 1st Reading and the Gospel is exclusion. Naaman and the Lepers are excluded from polite society. Interestingly, no matter how much of an advance we have made in society or as a civilisation, one thing for sure is that sinful humanity will find a way to segregate or to exclude. This exclusion may not even be wilful. For example, in our rush towards digitalisation, those born recently are frequently classified as digital natives. But the elderly have become digital orphans and excluded from the ever and fast-changing electronic landscape. How many of our elderly or the digital illiterates have been scammed?
The point is that exclusion is something we have to watch out for. Perhaps what Jesus remarked might be useful to remember: “The poor you will always have with you”. The Camino has confirmed this existential truth. We can all start out the same but we will never end the same. We can provide for an equality in opportunity but we can never force an equality of outcome without injustice to the natural order of things. There will be people who will be excluded, not wilfully but by the sheer truth that an equal outcome cannot be enforced. Now, in the case of those who have been left out, their salvation is in God. It makes sense that God is called the Father of orphans, widows and the poor simply because nature is simply unfair.
Thus, Naaman and the Lepers were able to see that blessings were not their entitlement. Rather they were gifted to them. When one has received a gift, one becomes a person of thanksgiving. Naaman found the true God and decided that he would now worship the God from Whom he had received the gift of healing. The Samaritan Leper came back to thank Jesus and praise God.
Gratitude is a response of faith. In other words, it is faith in action. We give thanks to God for His bountiful love shown towards us. Perhaps it makes sense to look at Laudato si from this perspective. It is not so much this overarching fear of the destruction of the environment that spurs us into action. Rather we begin to take care of the world because God has gifted it to us. It is our gratitude toward the Lord’s kindness that we begin to look at the world differently.
What might prevent this gratitude is the attitude of entitlement. Without denying the pain that people can go through or suffer from, take the example of a child. Every child is really a gift from God. In this sense than, abortion is spitting in the face of God who desires to give. Childlessness on the other hand, painful as it is, is not a curse from God. We do not know why some can bear, some cannot. It could be due to the quirkiness of nature combined with our lifestyles. Suffice to say that from the natural point of view, not every married couple will succeed in bearing children. There is pain involved and this is not to deny that.
However, we take the example of a child who died. It is always tragic as any death before time is. Yet, it is a matter of faith and gratitude that one gives thanks to God for that life, no matter how brief it may have been. Everyone who comes into our lives and has made a difference is a gift. It has never been an entitlement. Rather, it is a privilege.
How often is it that we become angry with God or are disappointed by God for not giving us what we ask for. Along the Camino on a very wet day as I was walking, someone scrawled on the white line at the edge of the road, God is love. It was so random and in the rain, I was thinking what that meant. Does God’s love for me means I get everything I want? What if I do not get what I want, would God still be love?
Could we or would we ever give thanks to God for the little that we have? Like the mother whose baby died at 5 years old giving thanks to the Lord for the 5 years rather than for not having more than 5 years?
We have become so entitled that our gratitude is now part of our entitlement. Meaning? We thank God only because He has fulfilled our wishes. Otherwise we would never thank Him.
St Josephine Bakhita, a Canossian Sister who was abducted, abused and sold into slavery thanked her former abusers. She reflected, “if I were to meet those slave-traders that abducted me and those who tortured me, I would kneel down to them to kiss their hands, because, if it had not have been for them, I would not have become a Christian and religious woman”.
When we are entitled we will struggle to show gratitude. There will always never be enough for us to be thankful for. Profound gratitude is a radical orientation. Prayers should consists of asking, showing sorrow, giving thanks and praising. Most of the time we petition or we express sorrow. But the prayers to thank and to praise are frequently hinged on how much we can get. That is entitlement. To let go of that, we need to give thanks and to praise no matter what. It is not easy and it might take an entire lifetime to move from “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” to “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess 5:17-18). But like the Camino, no matter how hard the climb, the grace to be thankful is one step at a time. We will get to the summit of praise with the grace of God.