Lack of gratitude

Recently, I confessed my consistent failures in praying a nightly examination of conscience. Then I asked if the priest could make some suggestions. Father Charlie Banks replied, “Conscious examen” suggesting a review of the day, starting with the good things, giving thanks for them. Then on to those that hadn’t been so good and asking for the grace to improve. The brevity and simplicity of the priest’s suggestions cut through the lengthy examination of conscience proscriptions I’d been failing at. Instead of wallowing in the failures of my day, thinking first about the tiny and not so small miracles of each day makes me want to do it!

Conscious examen, derives from Saint Ignatius’ spriritual exercices. The phrase recalls Saint Ignatius’ conviction that ingratitude is the greatest of sins In fact, Saint Ignatius writes:

“Ingratitude is the cause, beginning, and origin of all evils and sins.” 

A Gratitude Deficit

Since that confession, I don’t think I’ve missed a single nightly ‘conscious examen.’

Gratitude, its curious presence or absence in us, has intrigued me since childhood.. Although my father worked six days a week at his business that covered his clothes and hands with grime, he seemed grateful….for the work, the fact that he could work and that he could care for his family in a home in a small town outside of Boston where he grew up. My mom was mostly unhappy with life.

So I wonder, what is it? What is gratitude?

Is gratitude a virtue?

• Is it a feeling,
• Or an emotion?
• No, they are inadequate, it is more than these, much more, isn’t it?

In these ‘advanced’ times, the collective we has determined that each American is entitled to a ‘basic minimum’ of subsidized housing, food and income. Maybe add in medical care and other ‘rights.’Some of us rail that it’s too much while others rant that that it’s too little, while still others opine against the right of the collective to make our charitable decisions for us.

The once “creeping sense of entitlement” no longer creeps but gallops. Among its inimical effects is an us vs. them dichotomy whisch isn’t just false but hateful, as we see demonstrated on too many college campuses. But far more worrisome is the total absence of gratitude for all these free gifts.

GK Chesterton’s is a most excellent definition of graitude: “Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello once wrote, “You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.”

Saint Ignatius’ conscious examen focuses the mind, forcing us to ponder the prodigious blessings of God. The saint pushed: Knowiing there is always more we can do, always more glory we can give to God. Teaching us that each moment is gift, that lack of gratitude for them is a deadly sin.

There’s another reason I’m thinking about gratitude, its presence and its lack.

Until the film, The Unfinsihed Symphony, I’d not heard of Father Al Schwartz. As a new priest in 1957, he asked to serve under the Catholic Bishop in war-ravaged South Korea. The conditions were desperate with thousands of orphaned children starving on the streets. At first, he visited the orphanages. Their dismal conditions impelled Father Al to do something. On the Assumption of Mary, Augus 15, 1964, he started the Sisters of Mary, Girls Town.

Father Al’s story and the remarkable, miraculous creation of the Sisters of Mary: World Villages for Children, persuaded me to contibute financially to this sublime mission. Shortly after setting up the first of my monthly contributions, I received a thank-you letter from Sister Yadira along with thank-you letters from seven of the girls who live and study at the Sisters at Villa de Las Ninas. A girl named Maria wrote,

“I never imagined a school like this…a computer for me to use personally….Here I get to eat something each day. We have our beds. We have water that comes from the wall to wash in….”

Father Longenecker paid witness to 3,000 Mexican teenage girls blaze with a startling type of joy. He saw children in the process of being mothered back to health and serenity by 56 members of the Sisters of Mary religious community. In many of the villages outside of the Girlstown community are the human traffickers, drug runners and gang members from whom the soul-bruised teenage girls must escape….

“A visit to Chalco is a little glimpse of heaven,” said Father Longenecker, who wrote about his pilgrimage to Girlstown on his blog. “Music, flowers, children, dancing. The whole experience has impressed on me the importance of using aright the time that is left to me here on earth. … I came away from Girlstown astonished at what God can accomplish through one priest who is 100% for Christ.

“Venerable Al Schwartz was unstoppable — even with a crippling disease he did not give up relying on God’s power.”

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.