Late November into December is a very special time of the year. In the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving just before Advent begins. With God there is no such thing as a coincidence. Perhaps He has given Americans a special grace in the placement of this holiday on the doorway of our liturgical season of preparation for Christmas and the coming of Jesus at the end of time.
Thanksgiving is gratitude expressed. Fr. John Hardon’s definition of gratitude includes:
The virtue by which a person acknowledges, interiorly and exteriorly, gifts received and seeks to make at least some return for the gift conferred. (It) consists of an interior disposition, a grateful heart…
God has given us our very existence and continues to sustain our lives at every moment. He hopes that we will give our gratitude to Him for this and all gifts. He hopes this not because He needs our thanks, but because He knows a grateful heart will open us up to deeper life in Him.
The Fourth Thursday of November
Thanksgiving today bares little in common with that first feast in 1621 when abundance was a relative term, but gratitude was great. Americans love this simple but profound holiday, yet we can sometimes miss the point.
It seems that American Catholics are uniquely positioned to be among the most grateful people on earth. Having Thanksgiving in the rhythm of our year, we need only prayerfully enter the holiday and focus on gratitude through the following liturgical seasons. Not to mention that the source and summit of our Faith is the Eucharist, which literally means thanksgiving. It seems we just might be called to exhibit the virtue of gratitude in a special way.
Having been given these graces, perhaps we should ask ourselves how we are doing on the virtue of gratitude. Though the Thanksgiving Holiday remains, Fr. Romano Guardini, a well-loved 20th century theologian, remarked that gratitude is a “gradually disappearing virtue.” Looking at the broader culture and the onslaught of materialism and distractions that this time of year brings, it is no surprise that remaining in a posture of gratitude is difficult. Distracted and busy? Certainly. But grateful will have to be intentionally pursued if we are to receive the graces God intends.
A Simple Gratitude Practice
One way to pursue gratitude is to pray a daily gratitude Examen for the season of Advent. Start or end each day by looking back over the previous 24 hours, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the gifts that have been given. Let each one gently bubble up to the surface of consciousness and write them down. In the beginning, these efforts might yield items such as being thankful that it’s eggnog time again. That’s fine. Increasing gratitude for less secular gifts will emerge:
- For being able to go to Daily Mass today
- For the ability to help a family in need through the parish Giving Tree
- For time stuck in traffic which allowed me to pray the rosary
- For the joy of telling my nephew the Christmas story
Follow each entry with a “thank you, Lord” or whatever words come to mind and heart.
Close prayer time by asking the Holy Spirit how to grow in gratitude in the coming day. Spending time with the previous day’s list may also help gratitude to settle in deeper, as our memory of God’s goodness is reinforced over time.
This practice is not meant to burden an already overpacked Advent schedule. It is meant to lighten it by bringing to the forefront those beautiful gifts God is giving, before they get lost in the shuffle of the season. Keep it simple—but keep practicing it.
Gratitude Can Restore Us
This year, when carving the Thanksgiving turkey, consider how much we truly have to be thankful for, especially a Savior who was born a poor child for love of us. We can choose to know Him more now by nurturing the virtue of gratitude.
Giving thanks could be a restorative grace to our country, if we respond to it. Gratitude could form us into a people increasingly concerned about eternal things, who show that gratitude through our love of God and our treatment of each other. It is exciting to think about what God could do if this grace were allowed to flourish!
Without gratitude, we head in a sad direction, never satisfied and always looking to the next passing distraction that cannot possibly give life and peace.
The Vice of Ingratitude
In 1542, St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote a letter to Fr. Simão Rodrigues about the importance of gratitude:
In the light of the Divine Goodness, it seems to me that ingratitude is the most abominable of sins and that it should be detested in the sight of our Creator and Lord by all of His creatures who are capable of enjoying His divine and everlasting glory. It is a forgetting of the graces, benefits, and blessings received, and as such it is the cause, beginning, and origin of all sins and misfortunes.
Moving away from gratitude is no small thing. If we don’t receive God’s gifts with gratitude, we aren’t likely to grow closer to Him, nor be transformed into who He created us to be. Even our growth in wisdom is affected by gratitude:
All men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God, and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is… (Wis. 13:1)
To paraphrase St. Jerome, ignorance of God’s gifts is ignorance of Christ. If we are blind to the Creator of the “good things seen,” by our negligence of gratitude, we will fail to grow in the wisdom that is an essential part of being made in His image.
A Heavenly Virtue
Finally, Fr. Guardini also wrote this about the eternal importance of gratitude:
Who knows…what God feels when we not merely perform our duty toward Him, but give Him love; when our littleness strives to be generous towards Him? Then there is something in God which we may faintly and distantly indicate by the word gratitude, very briefly, then it plunges into mystery. But someday He will show us how He received our gift, and that will be a part of our blessedness.
Someday God will show us how He received our gift of gratitude! Our blessedness in heaven will reflect the gratitude we showed to God for the gifts He has given us. This is a gift that is truly eternal.
This Advent, let us carry the gift of Thanksgiving in our hearts and watch as it bears fruit all year long, and forever.
Father, thank you for every gift. Please help us to cooperate with the grace of Thanksgiving, to nurture gratitude and to enter the preparation of Advent. You have given us these means to enjoy a deeper relationship with you and a fuller revelation of the Incarnation of Our Lord. May we correspond to these graces for love of you. Amen.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
