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Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- Sep 6
- 4 min read
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. On Gratitude Towards our Neighbor.
The Gospel according to St. Luke, xvii. 11-19.
“At that time, as Jesus was going to Jerusalem, He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered into a certain town, there met Him ten men that were lepers, who stood afar off, and lifted up their voice, saying: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Whom, when He saw, He said: Go, show yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, as they went they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was made clean, went back, with a loud voice glorifying God: and he fell on his face before His feet, giving thanks: and this was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said: Were not ten made clean? And where are the nine? There is no one found to return and give glory to God, but this stranger. And He said to him: Arise, go thy way; for thy faith hath made thee whole.”
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will tomorrow interrupt the course of our meditations upon humility, that we may meditate upon the virtue of gratitude recommended to us by the gospel of the day. We will consider this virtue: 1st, as a precept of the natural law; 2d, as the soul of society and of the family. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to show ourselves, in all circumstances, grateful to those who oblige us, even if they should be our inferiors, and for the smallest services rendered to us; 2d, to do all the good we can to om fellows, without counting upon their gratitude. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Apostle: “Owe no man anything, but to love one another” (Rom. xiii. 8).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ complaining in the gospel that out of the ten lepers whom He had cured one only had come to thank Him; “And where are the nine?” Let us bless Him for this lesson, and ask of Him grace to profit by it.
Gratitude is a Precept of the Natural Law.
If the natural law obliges us to love our fellows even when they have offended us and have done us evil, what do we not owe towards those who have done us a service or shown a tender interest in us ? Love demands love; he who receives is under obligation, and the benefit granted calls for a return of gratitude. He who does not pay his debts is unjust; but he who does not pay the debt of gratitude is worse still — he is vile. It is a soul without delicacy and honor, which does not understand that every good heart ought to be grateful, and that the sweetest of enjoyments is to declare the benefit which has been received, and to give back as much in return. It is a soul which is base and lowered. beneath the level of savages, who show themselves to be grateful for a service; it sinks below the level of even the animals, of which many show themselves to be grateful to their masters and benefactors, even exposing themselves to death in order to defend them. It is, finally, an ungrateful soul, and that is saying everything, for ingratitude, the most odious of vices, is a hideous product of pride and malignity, founded upon the idea that he who gives seeming to be greater than he who receives, pride, being jealous of domination, cannot bear to make this avowal of inferiority. Hence it is that the proud is ashamed to confess that he has received a benefit; he hides it as much as he can; he is annoyed when it is recalled to him. Hence it is that nothing is so quickly forgotten as a benefit, and that the number of the ungrateful is infinite. In order to dispense themselves from gratitude, they try to imagine interested motives on the part of their benefactor; they search out in him for faults to be censured, wrongs to be reprehended; and if they can render him the slightest service, they make use of it in order to free themselves from the debt of gratitude. “I have rendered all back to him,” they say. Evil words are these ! The good man never forgets the benefit he has received even when he has rendered one as good in return, or even when he has had the happiness to do still more. Have we nothing to reproach ourselves with on this head ? Let us examine our conscience.
Gratitude is the Soul of Society and of the Family.
The world subsists only by means of an interchange of good offices. God, in order to link us together by the sweet ties of charity, has willed that we should all of us have need the one of the other: superiors have need of the service of inferiors; inferiors of the assistance and protection of their superiors; equals of the aid of their fellows. Let us traverse all the conditions, all the ranks of the social ladder; all ages from infancy to maturity, from maturity to old age; we shall see that nothing can go on in this world without a mutual interchange of services. Now these interchanges which are so necessary to society are caused by gratitude, which provokes them, which develops them, which renders them sweet and amiable, which is, in a word, the soul of them, whilst ingratitude is annoyed by them and often disgusted. Gratitude brings near to us the hard of which we have need, ingratitude puts it away; gratitude desires to fly to our aid, in gratitude is ready to forsake us; gratitude binds social links closer together, ingratitude loosens and dissolves them. And this is still more true in regard to family life. Which are good families, if they be not those where children and parents, husbands and wives, masters and servants, are always endeavoring to give pleasure to one another ? And where shall we meet with these delicate attentions excepting where they are the fruit of gratitude? Which are bad families, if they be not those where children are ungrateful, servants devoid of gratitude, where masters consider themselves to be dispensed from all gratitude towards their inferiors, under the pretext that they pay them, as though affection and devotion could be repaid by money?
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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