Having an Attitude of Gratitude

“It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
through Christ our Lord.”

                As Thanksgiving approaches, I seek to answer the definitive question of the season: “What am I thankful for?”  To which I can only answer, “Life, my family and friends, a job, and a place to call home.”  Before I can even finish my list, my mind replies, “Come on, Erin…what a cop out!  That’s the easy way out! Can’t you come up with something better, more spectacular?”  My first reaction – to downplay that for which I am thankful – is not uncommon as many begin their answer with the caveat of “I know this is cliché, but…”

                In trying to explain my list of thanksgiving, I came to a realization about our shared human experiences and desires.  This blog post seeks to put that realization into words while also recognizing that I am limited by my own experiences even when trying to put forth a common understanding of being thankful.  Moreover, everyone may not agree with me because my explanation seeks to subvert what is normative by bringing to light those desires that society often seeks to suppress but faith seeks to understand and embrace as profoundly human.

My insight is that many say they are thankful for fundamental relationships and basic necessities precisely because they are difficult – difficult to begin, maintain, and live without – NOT because they are easy.  When I say I am thankful for these things, I lump together, and rightly so, the good, the bad, and the messy.  For example, my thanksgiving for my husband encompasses his unyielding love for me despite my ever-changing mood AND my frustration for when he leaves things laying around the apartment.  My thanksgiving for true friendships includes their willingness to always listen to me in my time of need as well as their willingness to tell me what I need to hear even if it is not what I want.  And my thankfulness for my job embraces both the sense of purpose I derive from accompanying students on their journey and the long hours required to do so.

As much as I may be surrounded in this world by a push towards individualism motivated by selfishness and prestige, my true hopes, dreams, and wishes are for community, helping others, and a meaningful sense of self.  This is most notable when I remember difficult times in my life and reflect on God’s active presence within them.  While it is easy to sense God present in the midst of joy, my experience tells me that it takes time and reflection to discern God’s activity in our daily sacrifices and problems so that one can derive meaning instead of hopelessness from them.  Thus, honest reflection allows me to be in a vulnerable position of gratitude and to create this experience for others in the hopes that they and I are transformed by the process.

I am reminded by this important convergence of memory (anamnesis), sacrifice (kenosis), and gratitude (thanksgiving) at Mass during the beginning of the Preface when the celebrant says, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord.”  Not only is reflection important in order to be thankful in general, but through this process we discover who we are and who God is – beings in a relationship of love who desire to love and be loved.  Our thanksgiving is the proper and most fully human response to God who is the source of this love and expressed it most definitively through sacrifice in the person of Jesus Christ.  This is the love we remember and that God makes real in the unbloodied sacrifice of the Mass.  The most difficult part remains our own cooperation in this process by which we allow the sacrificial and self-emptying love of God to transform us evermore so into beings of love, humans.

So as we move towards the Season of Advent during which God empties God’s self by becoming one of us, let us allow ourselves the time and space to develop an attitude of gratitude.  In doing so, may we enter more fully into the divinely human journey that is life.

*Note: This blog post was also influenced by the theological reflections of John F. Baldovin, S.J. in Bread of Life, Cup of Salvation: Understanding the Mass.

Erin Schmidt is the Campus Ministry Liturgy Coordinator.