GIFT OF GRATITUDE

I clearly remember one of my Passionist confreres who was studying for ordained priesthood. We regularly met to reflect on his spiritual experience. He would come into my office, sit down, open the Bible, read a section, then pray spontaneously. It took me awhile to figure out that this man was not only controlling what went on during our meeting, he was also controlling God.

During one session I asked him, "Are you a closet Pelagian?" Wow, he left my office ripping mad. (I always remember one of my profs saying that all the ancient church heresies are alive and well. Just listen to what people say! He was right!)

Could you be a closet Pelagian?

Saint Augustine and Pelagius got into a major struggle that rocked the Mediterranean churches.

Augustine held that God's grace and favor came to the Christian community freely and gratuitously. God initiated divine presence, offered the gift of faith, and first loved us. The human community responded.

Pelagius held that Christians had to ready themselves in order to be worthy to receive God's grace. Only when we raised ourselves up by our bootstraps were we worthy of God's grace and favor.

Augustine's position won. God's freedom as creator and our free response as creatures was preserved.

Closet Pelagians tip their hand when they try to control God, when they work overtime to be worthy of God, and when they decide the level of their spiritual perfection and maturity. This deprives us from being a grateful people because we have to control God and have to make sure that God goes along with our plans.

I am concerned with closet Pelagians because I now want to write an entire series on the Eucharistic Prayer. "The center and summit of the eucharistic prayer begins: the eucharistic prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving and sanctification....The entire congregation joins itself to Christ in acknowledging the great things God has done (General instruction of the Roman Missal #54)."

The great thanksgiving prayer becomes the center and summit of the Sunday liturgy only when we cultivate a spirituality of gratitude. Grateful communities acknowledge the great things God has done and is doing in their lives. Thanking God for creation and redemption is possible when the gathered Christian community has developed a pattern of gratitude in its communal life.

Are you a grateful person? Are you thankful for the gift of life, for the faith you have received and developed, for the breath of God which sustains you in existence, for the marvelous wonder of creation, and for redemption, i.e., what Christ has done in the sacrifice of the cross?

Is your home a place of gratitude? Does your liturgical community convey a spirit of gratitude? It is not easy to be grateful. It requires that we be humble servants of God in our liturgical prayer and in our service to the world. It is easier to give God a listing of our accomplishments and achievements. Of course, we've done them for God. God should be grateful to us, after all, eh?!

Not so! God initiates; we respond with gratitude. The only way to understand our participation in the eucharistic prayer is to be a community of gratitude.