Pastor’s Notes

Over the past few days, I have been watching for the word … “thanks” in passing conversations.  It was my own experiment in interpersonal parlance.  Isn’t it a funny word in English?  How we use it says a lot about us.  We sometimes over use it and the sincerity slips away.  The words we use to respond to an unexpected “gracias” also says much about us.  “What do you say?” parents used to say to a little one with an unwanted Christmas gift from relatives.   A pinch under the elbow helped a “Thanks” to squeak out.  This was most challenging if you were not really thrilled with the present.

“Don’t mention it.” “No hay de que!” It is nothing.  But those words are the biggest lies in the English and Spanish languages.  Gratitude is everything for us humans. Do say it in response to the graciousness of others and sometimes one can steal the heart out of goodness.  But Jesus didn’t wait for thanks.  He gave the love of God even to those stripping away his life.  Perfect joy” is to love even when you are getting nothing back.  But for most of the time.  We need to put gratitude out there, because there is not enough.

Gratitude is about radical recognizing. The expression GIVE THANKS is used only 11 times in the four Gospels; most in the accounts of the same events.  It is used nine times by Jesus, mostly in connection to the last supper and the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.   It was used once by  the Pharisee who thanked God he was not like the rest of men and once in reference to the only leper in ten who returned to thank Jesus for his cure.  Why only one of the ten? Is one of the great-unanswered Biblical questions.

The early Franciscan brothers did their year of basic training “the NOVITIATE” in leper camps.  St. Francis would tell the new brothers “Don’t expect the lepers to respond much to your care for them, bathing, feeding or clothing…Wait til their resistance faded together with their pride, bitterness and resentment and hatred.   “Then” he said, ”feed them and care for them as a mother her child.”

Sometimes anger impedes gratitude.  We often get too ticked off or tired to bother with gratitude… Sometimes attitudes get in the way of gratitude – like “I deserve this,” or “What took you so long?”   To say thanks means stepping around pride, anger, bitterness and hurts and bad memories.  Gratitude is to simply allow what is unfolding in front of one.

To say thanks is to allow wonder to emerge. Meister Eckart the great Dominican mystic once wrote, ”If the only prayer you ever said was thank you, that would suffice.”   Eucharist is our best gratitude.  St. Mary’s does it well.   Blessings to all in PCLC and from all the parish groups who made the Feast of St Francis so lovely this past week.  We are blest by the hospitality of the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale and the friars and staff of our sister parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe near Tempe.  More on the wonderful gift they gave us in the coming weeks.

A Gentle Week,
Fr. Michael Weldon, OFM