Against all odds, he exported wool mittens to the West Indies, at just the time an exporter in that tropical climate began shipping to Siberia. Next, he literally sent coals to Newcastle, at just the moment a British coal miner’s strike made him a fortune there. He exported Bibles to the Muslim East Indies, stray cats to the Caribbean, and having hoarded a warehouse full of whalebone, by necessity invented the whalebone corset, which became all the rage in nineteenth century New England.
He was eccentric, but wise beyond his capacity, and never ceased to attribute his multiple successes to those who helped him along the way. Indeed, gratitude was, in his view, the most important of virtues.
“An ungrateful man,” he would frequently say, ‘is like a hog under a tree eating acorns, who never looks up to see where they came from.’
Remember the nine lepers in the Gospel parable who were just such narcissistic hogs? Only one came back to give thanks, but the nine who were cleansed of their disease, cured of their disability, now set on getting on with their life, with not a smidgen of gratitude and not a word of thanks to the Lord who cured them.
And we are not so very different. Sadly, ingratitude is so rampant in our day and age that we often become surprised by folks who are habitually grateful.
On the day I received my last postgraduate degree I practically sprained my wrist patting myself on the back. But did I think of Miss Lucasak who first taught me cursive in third grade, or Miss Morin who encouraged us to write those one page essays with the pictures two years later. Did I think of the Priest who first inspired me with a love for the Liturgy, or my parents who put me through College, or the inspiring professors I had come to know along the way. Did I think of the scholars who had constructed that world of knowledge in which I had gained some small degree of proficiency, or those who built the institutions which had led me through those mysteries.
No, I thought of none of them, I never gave them a thought or a prayer. I never said thank-you. Just like the ungrateful lepers, I got on with my life and I never looked back.
But here we are, you and me, trying to give thanks, at lest on this day, trying to crane our necks to at least look back. To break the bread, to tell the story, and to give thanks as best we are able.
For that is what we do each day in this holy house: We celebrate the Eucharist, the thanksgiving: a memorial of recollection and gratitude, in which we remember all that He has done for us, from our first breath to our last, the love, the mercy, the sacrifice....the faith which makes sense of the darkest days and the mystery which defeats the deadly with eternal joy and eternal life.
Which is why, at Mass, Fr. Paul, acting in the person of Christ himself, will call out to us: Lift up your hearts. And we lift them up to the Lord.
And unlike ungrateful lepers or hogs, we will give thanks to the Lord our God. For it is right to give him thanks and praise.
