Sacred gratitude

You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.

- Anthony DeMello

Gratitude is joy overflowing the heart. It is an experience of an open heart and a blessing even to feel the exuberance of gratitude and a heart full of such joy. As this year closes, I'd like to end it in the spirit of gratitude, for all that has been and all that is to come.  Life is still a beautiful, awesome experience. In the final hours of 2013, I'd like to share with the Tiger Lily community a beautiful homily preached  by Thaddeus, a dear and gifted friend, last Sunday to his St. Joseph University Parish in Buffalo, NY.  

Holy Family

by Thaddeus Pijacki, deacon

There is something you know about me, something very personal; and there is something I know about every one of you that is central to your life.  This is something we know about everyone we meet anywhere in the world, on the street, at work, even in church.

That is that all of us want to be happy!  In this we are all together, especially at this time of year when we say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year.

How we imagine our happiness differs from one another, but what we have in common is that we want to be happy.

On this feast of the Holy Family, we are reminded that a key to happiness lies not in things but rather in our relationships and one of the most common experiences resides in the family. Whether married or not, those closest to us form the intimate bonds that lead to happiness.

What is the key that opens the door of happiness in our lives?  The key is gratefulness.  Our second reading from Colossians tells us, "Let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.  And be thankful! Whatever you do, in words or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

The great spiritual teacher, Anthony DeMello, summarized this saying:  "You sanctify whatever you are grateful for."

What is the connection between happiness and gratefulness?  Many people would say that is easy: When you are happy, you are grateful.  But think again.  Does it really always work that way?
A few days ago many people were showered with an abundance of gifts.  Did that automatically make them happy?  And there were others who live with misfortune or poverty but with only a few gifts from an Angel Tree or warm meal from a soup kitchen, radiated happiness on their faces.  Why?

Because they are grateful!  It's gratefulness that makes us happy.  What does experience tell us about how this works? Something is given to us that is valuable to us.  And, it is given by the giver precisely to make us happy.  These two things have to come together.  It has to be something valuable and it's a real gift. Now valuable does not mean expensive, but it does mean important to the heart.

A gift is something you haven't bought, you haven't earned it, you are not trading for it, you haven't worked for it - it's just given to you. When something valuable is freely given, gratefulness spontaneously arises in the heart, happiness spontaneously arises in the heart.

So we can see how that happens on special occasions like holidays and birthdays, but the real challenge is how do we live with gratefulness and happiness every day?

The master key to happiness lies within our minds and awareness of the present moment.  The old saying goes that being aware of the blessings of the moment here and now is a gift, which is why we call it The Present.  Each moment is an opportunity to be grateful.

Does that mean that we can be grateful for everything?  Certainly not!  we cannot be grateful for violence, for war, for abuse, for exploitation.  But at times like that, when something difficult is given to us, it's a challenge to rise to that opportunity.  And we can rise by learning something that is difficult or painful for us like: patience, trust or forgiveness.

That is certainly the message in today's Gospel as the Holy Family flees to Egypt in the Messiah Relocation Program.  but they are promised that they will return home.  it reminds us that we always get another opportunity.  That's the wonderful richness of life.

So how can we find a method for living gratefully, not just once in a while, but moment to moment, that will bring us happiness? It’s actually a very simple method. It was told to us as children when we learned to cross the street.

Stop. Look. Go.

We often rush through life and miss opportunities for happiness because we don’t stop. We need to slow down, to stop, to be quiet. We need to build stop signs into our lives.

When I was in Mexico doing missionary work with my students, we didn’t have drinkable water from the faucets. When I returned home, I was so grateful for drinkable water from the faucet that it made me happy. For quite a while I stopped every time I turned on the faucet and was grateful for this living water. Gratitude becomes less of an emotion or feeling and more like a spiritual discipline.

Nowadays, I stop every time the telephone rings, which is quite often, to be grateful for either the friendship of the person who is calling or for the opportunity to help out the caller in their need. Telemarketers not included!!!

So leave it up to your own imagination. Find whatever works best for you because we all need stop signs in our busy lives.

And when you stop, you look. You open all of your senses to the richness of life that surrounds us. And when you do that, you open your heart for opportunities to help others, to make others happy.

Nothing makes us more happy than when all of us are happy.

These opportunities invite us to do something to bring about happiness. That is the third step: Stop, look and then go, really do something. That is the seed that can revolutionize our world. Remember: “You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.”

I love Christmas music, I start listening in early November. I have one of those clocks that plays a different Christmas Carol every hour. One of my favorites is, “Joy to the World.” A grateful world is a world of joyful people. We all have the opportunity by the simple Stop, Look, Go, to transform the world, to make it a happier place.

Gratitude is like a fine wine, it doesn’t happen overnight. It needs to be cultivated and nurtured over years and years.

This is what God wants for us, simply to stop, look and go, to bring Joy to the World: to all of our Sisters and Brothers in our Human family and to have a Happy New Year, not just on January 1st but on all 365 days of 2014.