Making melody in your hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things.
The Thanksgiving of Men
Solemn Throughout the Mass
“Thanks be to God,” “God be praised,” “Praised be Jesus Christ,” these are all words dear to Catholic hearts and familiar to Catholic lips. They are expressions of gratitude. They put into words what every creature of God should feel when he sees the immensity of the debt he owes to his Maker, and his utter helplessness to repay Him except in grateful love. The Church in the Mass, her most solemn and religious service, is loud in her thanks. The three ministers of the High Mass begin the mysteries in the hushed prayers at the foot of the altar; they move slowly and silently to the right for another brief prayer, and then with the same solemn movement they pass back to the centre. Expectations are aroused; worshipers await in awe, and the first song of the celebrant echoes through the church in the angelic Gloria. In the exultant series of worshiping acts which the celebrant chants, at the very end comes the triumphant cry: “We give thee thanks for thy great glory.” Again before the Mass relapses into the silence of the Canon, in rivalry with the answering choir, the celebrant chants the thanksgiving of the Church and proclaims aloud that it is deserving and just, it is meet and wholesome to give God thanks.
Embodied in the Eucharist
But thanksgiving is not merely prominent in the Mass with music and chant at solemn moments; it is also the earliest and most common name applied to the sacred mysteries. They were called the Eucharist, the thanksgiving. Jesus at the first Mass took bread and “gave thanks,” and in like manner took the chalice and “gave thanks” before the bread and wine were changed into His Body and Blood. The Mass is the sacrifice offered by grateful hearts.
Universal and Charming in Saint Paul
Saint Paul is full of gratitude. Most of his letters begin with the giving of thanks: “I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ for you all.” “Thanks be to God” rings out again and again through his letters. His grateful heart struggles to find full expression of itself. No thing, no time, no person must be omitted from the wide circle of Saint Paul’s gratitude. “In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all.” “We also give thanks to God without ceasing.” “All whatsoever you do in word or work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks.” “I desire, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men.” Saint Paul’s gratitude is as charming as it is universal. It was left for him to give us perhaps the most beautiful description of gratitude ever penned: a song of the heart. “Be ye filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things.” No wonder the cry, “Thank God,” rises so quickly, so often from Catholic hearts to Catholic lips. Saint Paul tuned our hearts to the music of gratitude, filled our ears with the echoes of gratitude, and the sweetness of that echoing sound has not yet died away and never should.
Ever Inadequate in Children
People forget; they do not think, and so they are not grateful. For years the mother lavishes her heart’s love on her child, guarding it from harm, cherishing it with increasing love; and what is the recognition which the mother receives? She feels content; she feels richly rewarded, if her child does but know her and greet her with a smile. Most of the mother’s favors and sacrifices are unrewarded, not because the child did not think, but because it could not think. For years it takes freely, eagerly, all that the mother gives and gives not back in return even one look of gratitude. The ungrateful child receives and richly deserves the scorn of all men, and yet that child, if most grateful, can never be grateful enough, because it does not know and cannot know all the favors its parents have bestowed on it.
Ever Belated in Pupils
Pupils are proverbially ungrateful, at least while they are pupils. They do not mark or notice the toil of their teachers. They are unable to appreciate the drudgery of classwork. Instead of gratitude for the patience shown to them, they have rather resentment against their teachers for the pain they feel in being forced to give up their ignorance. Years after, when life has shown them the value of their school lessons, then they think, then they remember, and, feeling in their own lives the pangs of ingratitude from their own charges, they bring their long-delayed gratitude to the graves of their teachers.
Lessened by Pride
Pride, as well as forgetfulness, is an enemy to gratitude. Gratitude is the recognition of a debt; it is bringing the heart to admit that it owes much to another. In grateful hearts such a recognition is cheerful and spontaneous. In proud hearts there is reluctance to admit any dependence upon another. We think we did most of our bringing up, when we were children; that we did most of our own educating, when we were students. So pride argues in its self-sufficiency. The favors of others are something due to our greatness. In fact, the favor is theirs, not ours. Do not thousands clamor to be introduced at court for the privilege of paying their respects to royalty? We, proud hearts, extend to the world the esteemed favor of kneeling before us and offering us the fruits of their industry, their sweetest flowers. The melody of gratitude is rarely heard in the proud heart. It was a satirist who stated that a race had been discovered so savage that they knew no words for gratitude, and in their language instead of “Thank you,” they said, “Do it again.”
Many of the children of God, many of the pupils schooled by His Son, because of their inadvertence, their ignorance, their forgetfulness, or their pride, are not “singing and making melody in their hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things.”
The Thanksgiving or Christ
Begun in the Incarnation
The Heart of Jesus is the best model of a grateful heart and is the most deserving object of worship for grateful hearts. If the hearts of mankind are ungrateful, because they do not know what is done for them, or do not remember, or are too proud to acknowledge anything has been done for them, those hearts are utterly unlike the Heart of Christ. Christ, our Lord, knew and remembered and humbly acknowledged the infinite favors which God had bestowed upon His Heart. The Incarnation is the most stupendous act of condescension, the most marvelous favor which could be granted to the world. It was God himself, stooping from the infinite heights of His divinity down to the uttermost depths of our humanity. Great as was the favor of the Incarnation to us, it was greater to the human nature of Christ. That nature was lifted to a sublime height. It could not be more highly favored than it was. Mary was honored by the angels, was called full of grace, was the object of favor from the blessed Trinity; but close as Mary was to the Incarnation, she was infinitely distant from it when compared with the humanity of Christ. If Mary, then, was highly favored – and no creature was more highly favored – how great must be the favor bestowed upon the humanity of Christ, upon the Heart of Christ. The mother is not the person of her child; she has not united to her the nature of her child; but God is the person of Christ’s human nature and is united to it so closely as to make one being out of that wonderful union. From the Incarnation sprang a host of other favors and blessings upon the human nature of Christ and so upon His Heart, a most prominent and an essential part of His nature.
Perfect in Manifestation
How grateful, then, is the Heart of Christ! Gratitude is the echo of a favor; it is the vibrating of the heart-strings in harmony with kindness shown. When the chords of two musical instruments are strung to the same pitch, if one is struck, the other, even though distant, will take up the sound and give off the same note. Where could the melody of gratitude make truer or better music than in the Heart of Christ, sensitive to the slightest favors because so keenly conscious of them, thrilling in response to the least kindnesses because so fair in appreciating them, breaking into the sweetest harmony because so humble and ready to recognize God’s goodness? If we understood and remembered perfectly and acknowledged perfectly all that was done for us, we should be perfectly grateful. The Heart of Christ, then, had the most perfect gratitude of any created heart because to infinite favors It made a perfect response; to God whose Heart It was, It offered most perfect gratitude in word and act and thought and in the fullest outpouring of thankful love.
Frequent and Full in Expression
We know how grateful Christ’s Heart was. In the most solemn moments of His life the thanks of Christ welled from His grateful Heart. Standing on the mountain in the presence of the five thousand men, besides the vast number of women and children, Christ gave thanks. Standing before the tomb of Lazarus, when about to perform the great miracle of raising from the dead, He again gave thanks, and in that final marvel of the Blessed Sacrament, once again He gave thanks. It was then He instituted the Eucharist, the Sacrament and service of thanksgiving; and when our hard hearts find themselves unable by dint of repeated efforts to cast off even a spark of gratitude at Mass and Communion, we may look back with some consolation to the Heart of Christ, whose tenderness and thoughtfulness and humility elicited that first, great act of thanksgiving for the gift of the altar.
Heartfelt in Lessons for Us
The Heart of Christ was gratitude itself, and the Heart of Christ is the best source whence to draw grateful feelings for our ungrateful hearts. It is the love in a gift which makes it a favor. The kiss of Judas is like a smile on the face of death, covering corruption with the appearance of life. Could our eyes look into the hearts of our benefactors, we should know how great ought to be the measure of our gratitude. We might not respond because our hearts were cold and callous, but we should know what heartiness and sincerity should ring out in our “Thank you.” Now, in the Heart of Christ, we have the evidence of the love with which He came to us, we have the measure to which our hearts should try to reach. The Incarnation came as a favor to us and the love behind that favor is the Heart of Jesus. There is the “grace of God, our Saviour”; there is “the goodness and kindness of God, our Saviour,” which, in the words of Saint Paul, “hath appeared to all men.” In devotion to the Sacred Heart we look upon the Incarnation as the manifestation of love in its most winning form, and as the Passion was the completion and fruit of the Incarnation, it too has left its impress and seal upon that bleeding Heart.
Supreme in Christ’s Passion
No doubt, Christ accepted and endured His Passion from countless virtuous motives. It was an act of obedience, of mercy, of fortitude, of justice, of patience, of meekness, of humility, of every virtue which found a home in the soul of our Lord; and it would be hard to say in that wonderful and attractive rivalry which virtue towered supreme. Saint Paul singled out on several occasions the virtue of charity. “He loved me and delivered Himself up for me.” Surely, we may look then on the Passion as the loving response made by Christ to the favor of the Incarnation. But what is gratitude if it is not love’s reply to favors given, if it is not a heart reechoing the love of another? The Passion, therefore, was an act of thanksgiving for the Incarnation. Christ received life that He might surrender it in death; His Heart was filled with blood that He might pour out upon us Its divine contents in gratitude. Surely that Heart should make our hearts sing with grateful love, giving thanks to God for all things. Should the sun which warms us drop suddenly through space like a wandering comet, in a very short time we should be cold in death. Imagine the sun withdrawn until we were on the verge of freezing, and then imagine it to leap back into the sky again and flood the earth with warmth and life. What a cry of thankfulness would arise from a rescued world! There would be one great hymn of gratitude singing in the hearts and breaking from the lips of mankind. Christ is our sun of justice; and His Heart is that sun’s central fire. The souls of the human race were doomed to death, when suddenly the life and light of His Heart’s love dawned upon us, “the Orient from on high visited us to enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to direct our feet into the way of peace.” And where is the world’s gratitude to the Heart of Christ?