How do you show your gratefulness to God and others on a daily basis? - Daily Reflections November 13,2013

GRATITUDE IN TERMS OF STATISTICS?

 

Ten lepers were healed and cleansed, but only one came back to thank Jesus, the Divine Healer. That means one out of 10, or 10 percent. Is that really the percentage of grateful people in the world?

       Our question or the data on which it is based might be a bit farfetched. But it may well be a valid question. And to think (considering the irony) that it was a Samaritan — a foreigner with whom the Israelites refused to see eye to eye back then — who was the grateful one.

       Long ago, there was a mystic, Meister Eckhart, who said, “If the only prayer we said in our whole life was ‘thank you,’ it would be enough.” It’s all basically a simple “think-and-thank” process. First, think of or recall the many graces and blessings you received from God... then, that’s it!

       Should it happen, unfortunately, that we lose our sense of utang na loob (inner debt of gratitude), something should bring us back to our senses.  Like what St. Paul once asked, “What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

       It’s true. The whole business of gratitude is more than just good manners. It is, as St. Ambrose said, our most important duty.

       Hopefully, the wonderful example of that Samaritan ex-leper will help increase the percentage of grateful people in the world. Or, on second thought, perhaps gratitude cannot really be quantified. Whatever it is, this world will be a better place if people learned how to look back and say “thank you.” Fr. Martin Macasaet, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: How do you show your gratefulness to God and others on a daily basis?

 

Lord, thank You for all that You are and all that You’ve blessed me with.