Gratitude

What are you grateful for?

I thought I would depart from my usual pontifications to invite all of you who read this to participate in a “Gratitude Fest” in honor of the awesome American tradition of celebrating our gratitude to God for the small and everyday things of life, which in reality are the BIG THINGS because they have the most impact on us!!  I’ll start!

I am grateful for my Mom, my Dad, and my beautiful sister.  I am grateful for all of the beautiful people I have the pleasure of calling my family and friends.  I am so grateful for the gift of extended family, all of whom are such an integral part of my life.  Not everyone today can say they have 14 aunts & uncles, over 50 cousins and more “cousins once removed”!  I LOVE YOU ALL!  I am also grateful for the many beautiful religious sisters I have had the joy of knowing more deeply in the shared gift of religious community.  I miss you, and pray for you.  I am grateful for the gift of faith, and for (what JPII called) the “drama of the human person:” the mystery of the journey of faith, on which I am accompanied by my Beloved.  And today, I am very grateful for the gift of celebrating this Thanksgiving with those around me.

So what are you grateful for?

Words

All the media excitement about B16’s statement on condoms in the new book released by Peter Seewald (http://www.zenit.org/article-31059?l=english) got me thinking a great deal about the importance of articulating the TRUTH.  It must be so frustrating for the pope to be misinterpreted all the time.  He is such an articulate person, and yet his words are almost always misunderstood.   I am so very impressed with and appreciate Pope Benedict XVI’s intellectual openness, his courage in embracing dialogue with atheists, evolutionists and secularists in general, and his intellectual humility in entertaining new ideas.  Yet all his efforts seem only reap more confusion.

It seems like many over the centuries we have relied too much on words in articulating the truth.  The quote attributed to St. Francis comes to mind, “Preach the Gospel at all times.  Use words when necessary.”  This is not a time of words – at least of effective words!  Words are purposely misinterpreted, twisted, compacted into sound bites and taken out of context 24-7 in our media saturated culture.  Words are not compelling in a world where information is spewed forth at us with the comparative force of a fire hydrant.  We cannot adequately reflect on the words and often do not have the time to quietly reflect on them.  To complete the analogy, to be able to reflect on some of the information we receive on a daily basis would be like trying to collect water from the hydrant using a spoon – you won’t get much, and most of it will be lost.

So how does a Church that has historically emphasized written articulations of the TRUTH communicate in such a culture?  I hope in the same way it has also done for thousands of years: through WITNESS to the TRUTH.  What converts hearts and makes the gospel message compelling are witnesses.  People are convinced by actions that convey TRUTH more than words.  When we see someone not just talk about love and goodness and beauty but live out the ideal through their lives, we are changed and begin to TRUST, because we realize the sincerity of the person proclaiming it.

This is why my admiration does not stop with the eloquence of the words of our Holy Father.  I have been even more convinced of the TRUTH of the Gospel by his WITNESS: by the continued respect and openness with which he treats those who disagree with him, by his kindness to those who continually try to twist his words, by his expressed commitment to expose and get rid of “the filth in the Church,” by the compassion he has conveyed to victims of abuse and his sincere sorrow and regret at what has happened.  I don’t know if these actions are noticed by most, but these actions have been a catalyst for conversion in the hearts of those who have had the experience of a human interaction with the Pope.

It is so much easier to speak the truth than to live it – and we all know how hard the speaking can be!  Action, while simple to understand, is heroic.  That’s why we celebrate and lift up the examples of saints!  I thank God that he has given us a pope who is not only an articulate speaker of truth, but has given consistent witness to truth through his many actions!!  The time is ripe for WITNESSES to the TRUTH.  My prayer today is that I can try to extricate myself from the “word-war” and just LIVE it!!