October 9, 2022

Years ago on retreat, I was able to have a long chat with an elderly Benedictine monk. While I presumed that he had been a monk for most of his life, I discovered that he had been a successful attorney, a married man, and the father of three daughters. I asked, “Were your daughters surprised that you become not only a monk but a priest?” He said, “No, I think they were relieved…they didn’t like my dating, after their mother died!” At the end of our chat, he said, “My whole life has been so blessed. I could sing one long hymn of thanksgiving.” His words were food for reflection on that retreat. Could I say the same? Was I truly living a grateful life? Today’s readings highlight the virtue of gratitude. In his 1st letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul asks, “What do you have that you did not receive?” To be grateful is to acknowledge that all that I am and all that I have is a gift.

We tend to divide our past into good things to remember with gratitude and painful things to forget. And in life we hope to somehow collect more good memories than bad ones, more things to celebrate than to complain about. That is quite natural.

But true spiritual gratitude embraces all of our past, the good as well as the bad, the joyful as well as the sorrowful. We are not saying that all that happened in the past is good, but that it didn’t happen outside the loving presence of God. Everything that has brought us to where we are now is all part of God’s guidance. Our challenge is to claim our entire past and to see how God has led us to this moment.

Here is the challenge—to see in the pains and struggles of the past the pruning hands of God, purifying my heart, giving me stronger hope and a fervent faith.

Remember how our Lord spoke of the Father pruning the branches on the vine so that they would bear more fruit. Pruning means cutting, reshaping, and removing what diminishes vitality. That pruning is not punishment but purification, strengthening. This is why a truly grateful person can thank God for his or her entire past. Our gratitude for the past should not be partial. Blessings have formed us but so have our burdens and struggles.

I often think of St. Peter who denied the Lord three times. He could have easily looked on his past with dreadful guilt and shame, but he did not allow his past to paralyze him. He embraced the past and could even thank the Lord who formed him into a stronger and more compassionate Vicar of Christ. Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it, the guiding hand of a loving God.

Today’s readings prompt this prayer: