One of the favorite penances that I love to give to penitents in confession is to ask them to name their blessings. I believe that naming, or even writing down, things for which we are grateful is good for our health - spiritually, mentally, and physically. Doing so is associated with lower rates of depression, anxiety, and pain, and with a higher sense of well-being. In other words, gratitude is a stress reducer. Perhaps that is because it is the very nature of the human person to be the recipient of God’s blessings. The more we give thanks for all that God has done for us, the more we embrace the reality of who we are.

This weekend, we read from the Gospel of Luke that nine lepers who were healed of their disease were not mindful of the meaning of what Jesus had done for them. They made their encounter with Jesus all about themselves getting what they had desired. But we also read that, after being delivered from such a terrible malady, a Samaritan leper returned and fell down before Jesus in gratitude. There is a difference in mentality and behavior between the Samaritan and the other nine Jewish lepers. This man did not have the pride of someone who expected everything to go his way because of his heritage or personal accomplishments. He could take nothing for granted and was profoundly thankful for a blessing he had never expected would come his way. He was truly humble and thus had the spiritual clarity to see that the only appropriate response to his healing was to fall down before Jesus in gratitude.

As human beings, just like the Samaritan leper, we would find ourselves up against difficult circumstances beyond our control that reveal our weakness, brokenness, and powerlessness. At those moments, the eyes of our souls may open a bit to the truth about who we really are. Despite our prideful assumptions, we are just like everyone else in a world corrupted by sin and death. Like the Samaritan begging for healing, we have no more claim on getting what we want in this life than anyone else. We then know that we are dependent upon the mercy of the Lord for our very existence and for every bit of joy in our lives. Though we must cooperate with His grace in order to find the healing of our souls, we may take no more credit for our salvation than the Samaritan leper could for his healing. That is precisely why our lives must be characterized by gratitude, which means not only counting our blessings and thanking God for them. It means appreciating deliberately what we have rather than focusing on what is lacking. It means behaving thankfully, such that we offer every dimension of our lives in union with Christ’s great Self-Offering on the Cross for our salvation. And it means living eucharistically, such that we become like the bread and wine fulfilled by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit as our Lord’s Body and Blood.

Faith, my dear friends, is not only something we have, but also something we do, something we live. And faith without gratitude is not faith at all. If we want to offer our souls, and even our bodies, to receive Christ’s healing, we must begin with gratitude for all that He has done for us. Only those who are sincerely thankful can develop the faith to entrust themselves to the Lord. Our task, friends, is to call attention to the fact that our human response of thanksgiving is not only the appropriate but also the most joyous thing to do. And this weekend’s Word of God grants us a glimpse of what gratitude and faith look like, and we will have to find out for ourselves what makes our faith a grateful and eucharistic one, and how it is acted out. Daily…