From childhood, we are taught to say “please” and “thank you.” These simple words belong to good manners and help us recognize that we should not take the kindness of others for granted. As we grow older, however, we discover that genuine gratitude goes much deeper than courtesy. It is an interior disposition by which we recognize the good we have received and acknowledge that much of what enriches our life has come to us as gift. A grateful person does not move through life assuming that everything good is simply owed to him.

The Gospel account of the ten lepers shows us how easily gratitude can be forgotten. As Jesus was travelling between Samaria and Galilee, ten men suffering from leprosy stood at a distance and cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Their disease had not only afflicted their bodies but separated them from ordinary society. They could not live normally with their families or participate freely in the life of the community. When Jesus told them to show themselves to the priests, they obeyed, and as they went they were healed.

We can easily imagine their excitement. Suddenly, the life they thought they had lost was being restored to them. They could return to their families and resume their place in society. Yet in the midst of this overwhelming happiness, only one remembered to return to Jesus. St. Luke tells us that when he saw that he had been healed, he came back praising God with a loud voice and fell at the feet of Christ to thank him.

Our Lord’s response is striking: “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” Jesus had freely healed all ten and did not withdraw the gift because nine failed to return. Yet their absence mattered to him. He noticed that only one had come back to give thanks.

The nine were probably not bad men. They may simply have been overwhelmed by what had happened and eager to return to the lives from which illness had excluded them. Perhaps they hurried home to embrace their families and tell everyone the extraordinary news. Their joy was understandable, but in their excitement over the gift they forgot the giver.

We can do the same. We pray intensely when we need something. When illness comes or some serious difficulty arises, we ask God repeatedly for help and perhaps ask others to pray for us. Then the problem passes, and life quickly returns to normal. Our attention moves to the next concern, and the gratitude we imagined we would feel can fade surprisingly quickly.

The healed Samaritan did something different. The gift led him back to Christ. He did not merely enjoy the healing; he recognized the One from whom it had come. His gratitude deepened his relationship with Jesus, and Our Lord said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” All ten received physical healing, but the one who returned received something greater. The miracle became a path to faith.

This reveals something important about the purpose of God’s gifts. They are meant to lead us toward him. Health, friendship, family, work, beauty and the ordinary pleasures of life are genuine goods, and God wants us to enjoy them with freedom and gratitude. Yet created things can become so absorbing that we stop seeing them as gifts. We enjoy what God gives while gradually forgetting God himself.

Gratitude protects us from this danger because it directs our attention beyond the gift to the giver. When something beautiful brings us joy, thanksgiving allows that joy to become a path toward God. When another person shows us kindness, gratitude helps us recognize both the goodness of that person and, beyond it, the providence of God working through human relationships. The more grateful we become, the more easily ordinary life reminds us of him.

Jesus himself lived with this spirit of thanksgiving. Before raising Lazarus from the dead, he lifted his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me” (Jn 11:41). At the multiplication of the loaves, he gave thanks before distributing the food. He rejoiced before the Father because the mysteries of the Kingdom had been revealed to the little ones. At the Last Supper, knowing that his Passion was about to begin, he took bread and gave thanks.

This is remarkable because Jesus, as the eternal Son, possesses everything with the Father. Yet in his humanity he lived in a constant relationship of love and thanksgiving. He received everything from the Father and returned everything to him in love. His gratitude was not simply an occasional expression of politeness. It belonged to the way he lived his relationship with the Father.

We are called to acquire something of the same disposition. Our lives are filled with gifts that have become so familiar that we scarcely notice them. We wake each morning with another day before us. We have people who care about us, abilities we did not create for ourselves and opportunities that came through circumstances we did not control. Even when our life contains real suffering, much remains that we have received.

We can become blind to these gifts precisely because they are ordinary. We notice immediately when something stops working, but rarely think about it while it works well. We become intensely conscious of our health when we lose it and may scarcely notice it while we possess it. We can complain about people close to us because their defects are familiar while overlooking the years of affection and service they have given us.

Gratitude teaches us to notice again. It does not require us to pretend that everything in our life is good or that other people have no faults. Nor does it mean that we should ignore injustice or remain passive when something needs to change. It simply allows us to see reality more completely. Alongside what is difficult, there is also much that is good, and we should not allow one disappointment to make us blind to everything we have received.

This is particularly important in our relationships. We are often more aware of what we do for others than of what they do for us. Our own sacrifices are easy to remember because we experience the effort they require. The sacrifices made by others can gradually become invisible. We may begin to assume that meals will be prepared, responsibilities handled, messages answered and help provided whenever we need it.

A grateful heart resists this sense of entitlement. We learn to notice the small acts of service that make our lives easier and to express our appreciation. This is especially important with those closest to us. We may thank a stranger immediately for holding a door while failing to thank someone at home who has been serving us faithfully for years. Familiarity should deepen gratitude rather than extinguish it.

Gratitude also requires humility because it reminds us that we are dependent upon others. None of us is self-made. We received life from our parents and depended completely upon others during our earliest years. Much of what we know was taught to us, and many opportunities we have enjoyed came because someone helped, encouraged or trusted us. Even our natural abilities are gifts we did not give ourselves.

The more clearly we see this, the less inclined we are to think of ourselves as people who have achieved everything through our own efforts. Certainly, we should work hard and take responsibility for our lives. But our efforts always build upon gifts already received. Gratitude allows us to recognize this without diminishing the value of our own work.

Our dependence is even more complete in relation to God. We owe him not merely particular blessings but our very existence. There was no necessity that we should exist at all. We are here because God freely willed us into being and sustains us at every moment. Before we have done anything for him, we have already received everything from him.

Christian gratitude therefore begins with the most fundamental gift: life itself. We can thank God for creating us and for giving us the particular life that is ours, with its mixture of gifts, limitations and circumstances. We may sometimes wish that certain aspects of our life were different, and there may be painful realities that we need time and grace to accept. Yet beneath everything else lies the extraordinary fact that God wanted us to exist.

Beyond the gift of creation stands the still greater gift of redemption. The Son of God became man for us. He entered human history, shared our condition and gave his life on the Cross for our salvation. We can become so familiar with these truths that they cease to astonish us, but they should remain the deepest source of our gratitude. Christ did not save humanity only in the abstract. St. Paul could say, “The Son of God… loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20), and each of us can make those words our own.

We can thank Christ for becoming man, for the years he spent at Nazareth, for every word of the Gospel and for his Passion and Resurrection. We can thank him for remaining with us in the Eucharist and for giving us the sacrament of Confession, where we can return after we have sinned and hear the words of forgiveness. We can thank him for the Church through which the faith has reached us and for the countless people who have transmitted that faith from one generation to another.

The Eucharist itself places thanksgiving at the centre of Christian life. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. At Mass, we do much more than remember God’s gifts. We are united sacramentally to Christ’s perfect offering of himself to the Father. Our thanksgiving becomes part of his.

The Preface of the Mass expresses this beautifully when the priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” and the people respond, “It is right and just.” Thanksgiving is not merely one possible attitude among others. It is the fitting response of a creature who recognizes the goodness of the Creator and of a redeemed sinner who knows what Christ has done for him.

We should therefore try to make thanksgiving a natural part of our prayer. It is easy for prayer to become dominated by petitions. We bring God our needs and the needs of people we love, and this is entirely right. Christ himself tells us to ask. But if our prayer consists almost entirely of requests, we may begin to relate to God mainly in terms of what we still need from him.

We can deliberately take time simply to thank him. We do not need elaborate words. We can recall some of the gifts we have received and acknowledge them before God: our life and faith, the people who have loved us, the education and opportunities we have received, our work and health insofar as we possess them, and the ordinary beauties of creation. When we begin to give thanks, we often discover how much there is to thank God for.

This practice can be especially valuable at the end of the day. An examination of conscience should certainly include recognizing our faults and asking forgiveness, but it can begin with gratitude. Before looking at what went wrong, we can remember what God gave us during the day. Perhaps someone showed us an unexpected kindness or a difficult task went better than expected. Perhaps nothing remarkable happened, but we were able to work, pray, eat, speak with people we love and complete another ordinary day of life.

We can also thank God for gifts we did not initially recognize as gifts. Some of the people who have helped us most may have done so by correcting us or challenging us. Certain disappointments may eventually have redirected us toward something better. This does not mean that every painful event is good in itself or that we should force ourselves to feel grateful for evil. Rather, with time we may recognize ways in which God has brought good from circumstances we would never have chosen.

Gratitude can therefore coexist with suffering. We do not have to wait until every problem is solved before giving thanks. St. Paul tells us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:18), not because every circumstance is pleasant, but because God remains present in all of them. Even in periods of darkness, some fundamental gifts remain unchanged. We are still loved by God, Christ has still died and risen for us, grace remains available, and eternal life is still our destiny.

Sometimes thanksgiving in suffering is an act of faith rather than a spontaneous feeling. We may tell God that we do not understand what he has permitted and that we would gladly be free of the cross we are carrying. At the same time, we can thank him for remaining with us and ask him to bring whatever good he can from the situation. This kind of gratitude does not deny pain. It places pain within the larger reality of Providence.

There is also something deeply consoling in knowing that Christ himself appreciates our acts of love. The Gospel shows us how attentively he noticed what people did for him. He praised the poor widow who placed two small coins in the treasury, defended Mary of Bethany when she anointed him with costly perfume and promised that even a cup of cold water given in his name would not lose its reward. Nothing offered out of love escapes his attention.

This matters because our efforts are not always appreciated by other people. We may make a sacrifice that no one notices or try to help someone who scarcely acknowledges what we have done. We should not serve in order to receive thanks, but lack of appreciation can still hurt. In such moments, we can remember that Christ sees what others do not see.

Our Lord tells us that whatever we do for “the least” of his brothers and sisters, we do for him. A hidden act of service, patience with someone difficult or a sacrifice known only to God is therefore never lost. We ourselves may forget many of these things, which is probably better for our humility, but Christ does not forget the love with which they were done.

This should make us generous rather than calculating. We do not need to keep an account of everything we have done for others or compare our sacrifices with theirs. If we know that Christ sees, we can leave the accounting to him. Our task is simply to love.

Thomas à Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ, encourages us to receive even the smallest gift with gratitude and to consider not only the gift itself but the dignity of the giver. This is an important insight. A gift that seems small can become precious because of the love with which it is given. When we recognize God as the giver behind the good things of our life, nothing need be regarded as insignificant.

A meal, a conversation with a friend, a beautiful landscape or an ordinary moment of rest can all become occasions for thanksgiving. We do not have to turn every pleasant experience into an explicit spiritual exercise. We should simply learn to enjoy God’s gifts without forgetting him. Gratitude allows us to receive created things freely because we see them as coming from his hands.

This also protects us from becoming excessively attached to them. When we treat something as our possession to which we have an absolute right, the possibility of losing it can fill us with anxiety. When we receive it as a gift, we can enjoy it deeply while remembering that every created good is temporary. Gratitude and detachment therefore belong together. We appreciate what God gives without making any created thing the foundation of our happiness.

A grateful heart gradually changes the way we look at life. We become less preoccupied with what we think we deserve and more aware of what we have received. We notice the generosity of other people more readily and become quicker to express appreciation. Our prayer becomes less centred on requests and more conscious of God’s goodness.

None of this happens automatically. Like every virtue, gratitude grows through repeated acts. We can begin with something as simple as saying thank you more deliberately, both to God and to other people. We can make an effort to notice services we have begun to take for granted and occasionally tell someone specifically what we appreciate about what he has done.

Above all, we can return frequently to Christ, like the Samaritan who was healed. All ten lepers received an extraordinary gift, but only one allowed the gift to bring him back to the feet of Jesus. We too receive innumerable gifts each day, many of which we scarcely notice. The important thing is that they should lead us toward the One from whom they come.

When we recognize something good in our life, we can allow it to become a simple prayer: Thank you, Lord. Thank you for creating me and calling me to know you. Thank you for the people through whom you have loved and formed me. Thank you for the faith, the sacraments and the Church. Thank you for becoming man, for dying for us and rising again. Thank you for remaining with us even when we forget you.

We will never succeed in thanking God adequately for everything we have received. Eternity itself will be an endless discovery of his goodness. But we can begin now. Like the Samaritan in the Gospel, we can learn not merely to enjoy the gifts but to return to the Giver. The more often we do so, the more our heart will come to resemble the grateful Heart of Christ.

*By the Via Virtutis team
Photo by Bobby Johnson on Unsplash