Life-Giving Appreciation
Rev. Gus Carter 10 /10 /04
The Readings which relate to this sermon are at this link.

I think we have all seen a parent bending over a child who has just received a gift and telling the child, "Now say thank you." Why do we want to train people to be grateful? Gratitude expresses our valuing of what has been done for us, valuing the person who has done it. One of the deepest human needs is to feel that we have value. We are enlivened by a sense of being worthwhile. On the other hand, actions that devalue us diminish our humanity and sap our life.

In today's Gospel Jesus contrasts gratitude and ingratitude. When he asked, "Where are the other nine?" there was a note of sadness that these lepers seemed to hardly appreciate the healing gift Jesus gave them. As S9 often happens in our relationship with God, the Lord is mainly upset when we fail to take the opportunity to give life, when we fail to grasp the possibilities of life for ourselves. In some way, when we express our appreciation for another person, we are giving that person life. We are giving them a sense of one of the most important things for human beings, a sense that they are valued. This helps them reflect on their value in God's eyes.

If you invite someone to dinner and they show no sign of enjoyment, it is a pretty dull meal, not to say a traumatic occasion. When people show no response to what we do for them, it is a real downer. Appreciation is a sign of life. When we express appreciation in an appropriate manner, we convey life, and, in the paradoxical way of the Gospel, we enhance our own lives.

The importance of appreciation, I think, is illustrated by the dictionary definition: "to appreciate is to exercise wise judgment, delicate perception, and keen insight in realizing the value of something." Doesn't that express depth in one's life. When we genuinely try to appreciate what is around us, we grow as human beings. No wonder Jesus wants us to be grateful. It is in appreciating the life God has given us that we make ready responses to God's goodness to us. When we see goodness as attractive, we want to incorporate it into our lives. Another powerful thing that appreciation does for us is that when we see good and are attracted to it, we want to imitate it. We are told to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, in our own way. We need to know what we are called to. To appreciate the kind of goodness we are called to helps us to be that good, to live that good.

Grateful acknowledgment of God's gifts in my life completes faith. Unless I can grasp the good God intends for me, I have not understood the relationship of love to which God invites me. God's love is lavished on us with gifts we receive every day. If we never stop to look at them or think about them, we miss all the ways in which God is expressing his love and care for us.

In my experience, grateful people are happy people. Thankfulness indicates that we have grasped something of the fundamental goodness of all things. The deepest religious experience of most people is of the incredible goodness at the heart of the universe. As we develop an attitude of gratitude, as we begin to sense the blessings around us, we begin to live according to that blessedness. We believe that everything expresses God's goodness and God's desire for our good. In gratitude we begin to take hold of that good.

Indeed, we need to "count our blessings." We must express our thankfulness for life, for life-giving people, for friends - all who have contributed to our development, such as those who educated us, employed us, helped us with our achievements. How fortunate are those people who are aware of the common beauty of an ordinary day. They are able to see beauty every day in many ways. Really grateful people exude joy. We are sometimes humbled by the gratitude of those who in our estimation seem to have so little to be grateful for. We realize that in some way they have discovered the secret of life.

The ten cured lepers surely each had some sense of gratitude, but nine never expressed it. When we appreciate something from another person, we need to communicate that gratitude to them. We also need to reflect on God's goodness to us and to express our gratitude to God. We call the Mass simply "the Eucharist" which means "thanksgiving." We are Eucharistic people, people filled with gratitude which is our way of accepting and appreciating the good that God has done in our lives. We need to pray for the gift of appreciation, the ability to say "thank you" to God. Our sense of the goodness of life will be communicated to those we meet every day. We will be hope and light to those who feel they are living in darkness.