Tag Archives: Virtue

Looking with Lust

Anthropology, Contraception, Human Dignity, Incarnation, Sexual Ethics, The Life of Jesus, Theology of the Body, , , , , ,

Our Lord would most accurately be labeled, at least according to modern standards, a total prude.  He reached a puritanical pinnacle by inventing a totally new category of adultery which he dubs “adultery in the heart” that occurs when a man looks at a woman with lust.  This divine priggishness makes it practically impossible for men and women to even be around each other, or at least that is how it seems.  The modern mind, trapped in a world without virtue, can only see two options: puritanical or prurient.  But Our Lord is really offering a third option, one that ultimately leaves us with the power to love freely and not free love-ers.

Anyone encountering the Sermon on the Mount for the first time must immediately be struck by the unbelievable idealism of the mode of life Christ is putting forth.  He would be the world’s most moralistic man except for one important detail.  Whenever Our Lord issues a command, He never simply leaves us to our own devices, but also seeks to give us the power to fulfill His commands.  His coming to “fulfill the law” isn’t just a matter of prophecy but a matter of grace.  Through the power of His grace we are able to fulfill even the most idealistic of His commands, the command not to look upon a man or woman with lust included.

Christ the True Moralist

Herein lies a major point of misunderstanding about Christ the moralist.  His commandments are such that they both contain the path to freedom while simultaneously leading us to freedom.  He is the Truth and the Way.  What Christ is commanding is really an offer that will free us from looking upon another person with lust.  The power to see the other person as a person and not merely an object of pleasure.  This power then opens the gates of freedom that enable us to love purely as the only true path to happiness.

This pathway to love however also requires us to properly understand what it means, and more importantly what it doesn’t mean, to look at someone with lust.  Lust is not just looking at person of the opposite sex, but is a gaze that is filled desire to use the other person.  In this regard it is helpful to turn to Pope St. John Paul II’s teachings in Love and Responsibility.

Love and Responsibility and Lust

The former Fr. Wojtyla sought to explain how attraction is felt between members of the opposite sex.  In encountering a person of the opposite sex, a man or woman has a natural response to the sexual value of the other person.  These responses come in two forms: sensuality or the reaction to the sexual value in the other person’s body, and sentimentality or the reaction to their perceived masculinity or femininity.    This spontaneously felt response, without the governing of reason, finds its culmination in the desire to possess the value.  Notice that it is the value itself that we desire to possess regardless of the person who possesses that value.  The other person becomes an object of use, rather than a subject to love.  John Paul II labels this phenomenon subjective egoism because it is based completely on how the person feels in response to the other person.  Lust then is the expression of the desire to possess the value, it is the choice to use the other person.

This distinction between interest and expressing the desire is important because merely acknowledging the sexual value of the other person (we might call this interest) is not the same thing as lust.  Interest is perfectly natural and in a very real way something that happens to us rather than something chosen.  It is not just the seed of lust but also the seed of love.  Once the interest is piqued, desire is sparked.  Desire sees the person as an object to be enjoyed but still is not sinful as long as the will resists that desire to use the person.  This too is an important element of love, but it must always be purified such that it is directed to the whole person.

A few examples might help.  A man sees a woman and is drawn towards some perceived sexual value in her body.  His emotional response brings him pleasure and he must now make a decision.  Will he continue to linger on the fact that she is “hot” and the pleasure that looking at her brings or will he remind himself that it is a person and that using her (even though all he is doing is looking at her) is wrong?  If it is the former, then he has lusted.  If it is the latter then he has, even in a very primitive way, expressed love for her by willing her good in choosing not to treat her like an object for his own enjoyment. 

Notice that what is being suggested is not repression.  The attraction is natural and there can be no love without it.  What has to be “repressed” is the urge to use the person.  The man may feel the attraction and move to meet her, but in order not to be lust, he must go to her as a person and treat her as such.  The attraction is still there, but it must move the man towards its proper end—the woman who has stirred his heart and not just her body.  In being free from lust, he is now free to love the woman and not his own emotional response to the sexual value of the woman.

Adultery in the heart has everything to do with what is happening interiorly in the man and it is from this that Christ offers freedom.  How this happens can be shown by two further examples. 

Imagine a married man meets another woman with whom he has regular contact and she awakens sexual interest in him.  He begins to develop sexual desire for her and so now he chooses to avoid her because he fears that he may lust after her.  To avoid the near occasion of sin is a good thing, but it is not yet freedom.  Freedom comes when there is no threat of lust, that is, when the man is chaste. 

Like all virtues, chastity governs the spontaneous arising of the emotions attached to attraction.  The man is simply able to acknowledge the woman’s beauty without being stirred to lust.  He is free now to see her as a person who is beautiful without any desire to possess either her or her beauty.  He can simply appreciate it as beautiful and move on.  The truly chaste married man only feels attraction for his wife. 

Likewise, the chaste unmarried man will feel the emotions of attraction, but they will be moderated such that they do not move him to use the person.  Instead he is drawn towards the person and able to pursue her purely based on her personality and not solely on her attributes.  He can see her in truth and not be blinded by those attributes.  He is completely free in his love for her.

Our Lord’s prudery then is nothing less than an offer for authentic freedom.  Our Lord practiced chastity to the perfect degree and has offered us each a share in His virtue in order to free our hearts to love to the full.

The Rehabilitation of Chastity

Anthropology, Contraception, marriage, Moralilty, Sexual Ethics, Theology of the Body, Virtue, , , ,

In his book Love and Responsibility, the future Pope John Paul II lamented the demise of virtue, and in particular, the virtue of chastity.  A spirit of resentment has emerged in the modern psyche towards high moral standards and anyone who practices them.  What was once admirable, even if very few people could master it, is now met with scorn and rationalization.  Chastity is viewed as repression and psychologically harmful, especially in young people.  But in truth, without chastity there can never be any true love.  That is why John Paul II thought modernity needed a “rehabilitation of chastity” and set out a program in Love and Responsibility for accomplishing it.

An Elusive Definition of Chastity?

Part of the reason that such a rehabilitation is necessary is because chastity is rarely defined in positive terms.  St. Thomas Aquinas defined chastity as a sub-virtue of temperance, the virtue that controls the concupiscible appetite.  He points out that chastity “takes its name from the fact that reason ‘chastises’ concupiscence, which, like a child, needs curbing” (ST II-II, q.151, a.1).  Of course, modern sensibilities being what they are, any whiff of restraint, is seen as an assault against freedom. If chastity is to be revived then we must expand our view of it as “a purely negative virtue. Chastity, in this view, is one long ‘no’” (L&R, p.170).  What Fr. Wojtyla hoped to accomplish then is to see chastity as “above all the ‘yes’ of which certain ‘no’s’ are the consequence” (ibid).

Chastity’s alleged violation of freedom really seems like an assault on love.  But this is only because our view of love, especially between the sexes, is far too narrow.  When the love between a man and a woman is viewed as primarily based on the subjective emotional and sexual experiences of the individuals then chastity will always be something negative.  This is not love, but use.  The two people use each other in order to “feel” like they are in love.  They do not love the other person but they love the feeling of being in love.  And they will be “in love” with the other person only so long as they are able to cause the emotional response. 

As opposed to its counterfeit, love is something objective because it is based not upon on an emotional and sexual response that the other caused, but on the objective value of the other person.  Love must always be directed towards the person and the value that they have as persons.  As good and as powerful as the sexual value of a person is, it does not exhaust their value.  Love between the sexes incorporates that sexual value into the total value of the person as a person.

When use is substituted for love, then chastity “feels” like it is holding love back and keeping it from blossoming.  In truth, chastity is an indispensable ingredient for love because “its function is to free love from the utilitarian attitude” (p.169).  Chastity is not a ‘No’ to sexual pleasure but a ‘No’ to treating the other person as an object of sexual gratification.  It is a steady and habitual refusal to use the other person.  It is a habitual readiness to affirm the full value of the other person.  Returning to JPII’s words, “only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love. For chastity frees their association, including their marital intercourse, from that tendency to use a person” (L&R, p. 171).

Pleasure Freed by Chastity

The traditional definition of chastity, true as it is, does not exhaust its full meaning.  Chastity does not just moderate our sexual desire, but “liberates love from the attitude of use.”  It is then both a ‘No’ and a ‘Yes’—no to use, yes to love.  No longer under the sway of unbridled emotion, sexual desire is liberated to roam free and be directed towards the full value of the person.  Only the chaste man and woman experience true pleasure of sexual desire because it is governed by reason and directed towards its natural end. 

This is the great lie of those who would have us believe that chastity is mere repression.  Sinners always love company and seek a way to rationalize their own vices.  On the surface, and at least initially, it is easier to yield to sexual desire.  But pleasure is always fleeting and when chosen as an end always operates under the law of diminishing returns.  But John Paul II encourages his readers to persevere because virtue takes time and suffering because of our fallen nature.  Once it matures pleasure is restored to its natural place and, surprising to our untrained minds, actually increases.  The “in-between” time in which chastity feels like repression is certainly difficult, but once it grows, like a fully mature tree, it provides the sweet fruit of pleasure.  This reality only comes about however when chastity is seen as worthwhile.    

Fully rehabilitated chastity enables us to see that it is, like every decision that we make, both a no and a yes.  It is a no to a utilitarian relationship and a yes to the full blossoming of both spousal love and friendship.

The Social Construct Myth

Anthropology, Church and State, Church Authority, marriage, , , , , ,

Marriage, according to conventional wisdom, is a social construct.  Governed by cultural norms and expectations, the institution of marriage is completely malleable.  This view of marriage was front and center in the debate over same-sex marriage, but the battle against traditional marriage was won long before that when divorce, especially in its no-fault variety, became an acceptable norm.  Divorce, or at least its cultural acceptance, is what changed marriage making it a social construct.  To say divorce made marriage a social construct is to suggest that things once were otherwise so that if we are to grasp how we got here, we might simultaneously find a remedy. 

Anthropological Roots of Divorce

Deeply imbedded within the Western mind is the notion of man as a rugged individual.  Naturally solitary and free, man forms a social contract either to escape the anarchy of the state of nature (Hobbes) or its noble savagery (Rousseau).  All social institutions become “social constructs” in which men and women freely enter and freely leave according to their own will.  From within this paradigm of liberalism, marriage like all other social institutions are “social constructs” in which men and women freely associate and equally as freely disassociate.  Only the State remains a permanent fixture so as to protect the individual from other individuals infringing upon their rights, even if it too is ultimately a social construct.

Civil divorce grew out of the soil of 18th Century liberalism because it, like all other private contracts, was completely voluntary and always in danger of one of the contracting parties dissolving the contract.  In order to protect this freedom, the State adopts the stance of arbiter and enforcer and is empowered to dissolve what was previously thought indissoluble.  Given the power to dissolve, the State must also then have the power to define and decide what marriage is and who should be married.

There is a certain irony surrounding the fact that marriage was not always thought to be a social construct.  The “social construct” viewpoint replaced the natural view of marriage.  For millennia, marriage was considered to be a natural institution that formed the foundation of the family which was the building block of society as a whole.  It is the natural view of marriage that would preclude either divorce or gay marriage.  By combining them into a single issue it avoids reducing the argument to mere biology.

It is not any mere external circumstances that draws man into society, but his nature.  Man is by nature a social animal.  In order to fulfill his nature, he must have a society of other men to do that.  Because they are absolutely vital for fulfillment, the family and the State are natural societies.

In order to grasp this truth, we must also see that men and women fulfill their nature by becoming virtuous.  Virtue is what perfects all our natural powers.  Marriage is the bedrock of virtue.  Only within the framework of the family are both the spouses and children perfected in their gift of self and unity.  It is where the children are educated in the cardinal virtues as they prepare to give themselves in service to society as a whole.  It is where siblings learn how to live as a community of equals.  It is where parents learn to shed ego.   As statistics repeatedly show, those who divorce or are victims of divorce severely handicap their chances at fulfilling their nature.

It is the Author of human nature, and not the State, that is the Author of marriage.  Marriage, because it is a complete union of persons in all their dimensions—bodily, spiritual and temporal—and thus naturally indissoluble.  The State does not make marriage but only provides an occasion for consent and works to protect and promote it.    The State in its role as guardian of the common good, may act to protect and promote marriage, even by dissolving legal bonds between spouses, but is powerless to dissolve the marriage itself.  In truth a civil divorce is worth no more than the paper upon which it is printed.

Marriage, because of its indispensable and irreplaceable role in fulfilling human nature, is a natural institution and not a social construct.  Understanding the roots of the errors that led to its demise helps us to go back and correct them. 

Saint John Henry Newman and Chastity

Communion of Saints, Defending the Faith, Friendship, Homosexuality, Moralilty, Sexual Ethics, Sin, , , , , ,

In the days leading up to now St. John Henry Newman’s beatification in 2010, NPR’s All Things Considered turned its consideration towards the question as to whether the Cardinal may in fact have been gay.  Never one to miss the opportunity to promote the LGBT agenda, Fr. James Martin retweeted the article on the eve of Newman’s canonization saying, “This doesn’t imply that the man who will become a saint tomorrow ever broke his promise of celibacy. And we may never know for sure. But his relationship with Ambrose St. John is worthy of attention. It isn’t a slur to suggest that Newman may have been gay.”  Although no one in the Church hierarchy is likely to correct Fr. Martin, it is both a slur and manifestly false to suggest that the saint may have been gay.  A comment such as this is not only disingenuous, but reveals the lavender glasses that color everything that Fr. Martin says and reveals his animus for true Catholic teaching.  In the 2010 NPR piece, Fr. Martin was interviewed and offered that, “It is church teaching that a gay person can be holy, and a gay person can be a saint.  And it’s only a matter of time before the church recognizes one publicly.”  This reveals a serious flaw in his thinking and shows why he is ultimately unfit to minister to those people who struggle with same sex attraction. 

The Saints and Heroic Virtue

The second step in the process of canonization is to be declared Venerable.  This declaration, which, in Newman’s case, occurred in 1991, declares that the man exercised all of the virtues, both theological and natural to a heroic degree.  The point of such an examination is to show how deeply grace had penetrated the man’s life enabling him to practice the moral virtues with ease and the theological virtues eminently.  Among these natural virtues, chastity plays a key role meaning that, in Newman’s case, the Church has declared that he practiced chastity to a heroic degree.  And herein lies the problem with Fr. Martin’s hypothesis, both regarding the new saint and any canonized saint in the future: you cannot exercise chastity to a heroic degree and also be gay.

This may seem rather harsh, until we examine the nature of virtue in general.  The role of virtue in the moral life is to habitually order our faculties towards their proper end.  These powers of the soul “train” the lower faculties to respond in accord with right reason.  The man who struggles with disordered anger, or what we would call the vice of anger, by developing the virtue of meekness not only is able to keep himself from angry outbursts, but actually so governs his feelings of anger that it is only felt when it is reasonable to do so.  A similar thing can be said about all of our other vices or disordered inclinations including Same-Sex Attraction.  Just as meekness roots out any disordered anger, chastity roots out all disordered manifestations of our sexual faculties and orders them towards their proper ends.  The man who is truly chaste would no longer experience SSA.    

Notice that I did not perform any of the usual moral hairsplitting that many people make regarding this topic between homosexual activity and the vice of SSA.  While this may have some value in assessing personal culpability, it has no place when it comes to the virtue of chastity.  To employ such a distinction, such as Fr. Martin does in this case only serves to muddy the moral waters making chastity harder, not easier.  It all stems from an error in thinking that chastity and celibacy are the same thing.  But they are most certainly distinct.  Celibacy has to do with restraining the exterior actions.  Chastity has to do with properly ordering interior inclinations.  A man may be celibate without being chaste, but an unmarried man cannot be chaste without also being celibate.  Fr. Martin seems to suggest that St. John Henry Newman fell into the former category—celibate without being chaste.  To suggest that a canonized saint wasn’t chaste is a slur, especially given that the Church has declared him to be a man of heroic chastity.

Deep down, Fr. Martin knows all this.  This is his motivation for trying to change the designation of SSA from disordered to differently ordered.  If it is merely that there is a different ordering, then the chaste person could in fact experience SSA.  But if it is disordered then it will be rooted out as the person grows in chastity.  There is no reason why a person who struggles with SSA (or to use Fr. Martin’s designation of gay) couldn’t become a Saint someday, but it will only happen after they have removed that vice (and all the others) from their lives.  In fact, there may already be some Saint that had this difficulty at some point, but to suggest that we might someday have a gay saint is like saying that we already have a fornicating Saint in St. Augustine.  St. Augustine is a Saint because he became chaste and rooted out all the sexual vices he had in his soul. 

Blinded by the Lavender Light

All of this reveals why Fr. Martin is ill-suited to minister to those who have SSA.  All he can see is gay.  In examining the life of John Henry Newman, it is quite obvious that he deeply loved Fr. Ambrose St. John.  But it is only someone who sees all things in a lavender light that would mistake the love of friendship with erotic love.  The aforementioned St. Augustine, on losing a friend said:

I was amazed that other mortals went on living when he was dead whom I had loved as though he would never die, and still more amazed that I could go on living myself when he was dead – I, who had been like another self to him. It was well said that a friend is half one’s own soul. I felt that my soul and his had been but one soul in two bodies, and I shrank from life with loathing because I could not bear to be only half alive; and perhaps I was so afraid of death because I did not want the whole of him to die, whom I had love so dearly.

This seems very similar to what Newman said at the loss of his friend “I have always thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s but I feel it difficult to believe that anyone’s sorrow can be greater than mine.”  Would Fr. Martin have us believe that St. Augustine was gay or bisexual?  Or is it, that he is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging that there is a proper, non-sexual love between same sex persons in friendship?  One of the ways in which chastity is increased in the person with SSA is to acknowledge that to the extent that his love for the other person is real, it is really a disordered love of friendship.  Once this is realized the person is able to develop a healthy and ordered love for the other person.  What makes Fr. Martin unsuited then to help these people is that he would not admit to the true love of friendship.  Otherwise he would not make such a stupid comment about St. John Henry Newman, but put him forward as an example of how those with SSA might purify their love for a person of the same sex through authentic friendship. 

A New Asceticism

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Living in an age of unprecedented material prosperity and comfort, the practice of asceticism is a relic of ages past.  The word itself invokes images of emaciated monks wearing hair shirts and living in the desert.  Asceticism is still a foundational element in a healthy Christian life however and something that is foundational to the Christian life.  With this in mind, it is instructive to examine this practice with twenty-first century eyes.

What Is Asceticism?

Crippled in practice by misconceptions, a definition of asceticism is in order.  It is derived from the Greek word askētikós which means subject to rigorous exercise and hard work in the pursuit of virtue.  Simply put, asceticism is the strenuous effort one makes to overcome the deep division within his nature.  Asceticism is never done for its own sake, but always as a means to an end.  Forget this and it becomes more an exercise of ego than a Christian practice.  Christian asceticism is a means to greater freedom.  It is always done so as to live with the freedom of the children of God.  The more control we have over ourselves, the more grace is able to penetrate and transform us.  Grace perfects nature.

Never forgetting that we are earthen vessels, there is a vast difference between what we might call a heathen asceticism and Christian asceticism.  The heathen attempts to simply beautify the body the body while Christians attempt to bring it under control and train it for the glory of Heaven.  The heathen attempts to avoid death, the Christian lives looking forward to the Resurrection of the Body.

Asceticism is fitness training for the glory of heaven.  This training is approached from two angles.

The first is the classic approach in which we refuse to the body all that can weaken our soul’s union with Our Lord.  We know that, as fallen men and women, we are uncomfortable in our own skin.  Our bodies seem to have a mind of their own and so we must consciously forgo things that are good for us.  This training is not so much meant to bully the body but to prepare it to serve the higher goods of the soul.  In our resurrected state, the body will be under the command of the higher faculties of intellect and will—asceticism of this sort looks forward to that day.  We do what we can and wait for grace to do the rest.

The New Asceticism

On his death bed, St. Francis of Assisi had one regret—that he had been more gentle with Brother Ass, the moniker he gave to his body.  It is in this spirit that we view the second approach of actually taking care of our bodies.  A “new” asceticism might consist in doing all of those things and only those things that are necessary for our union with Our Lord.  In the old asceticism, the practice often overshadowed the purpose.  Subduing the body is not the end.  We subdue the body so that we may live fully in the freedom of the children of God.

Why this is “new” is because it reflects the times we live in.  Some of the poorest among us are surrounded by material comforts that only nobility would have enjoyed in the past.  With access to so many comforts, abstinence remains an option, but the harder path (i.e the path of virtue) is to practice moderation.  It allows us to use the material gifts God has provided with a greater freedom—the freedom that only comes when we use things according to the use that God intended.

In a vicious man, the body is a danger to his spiritual health, but in the hands of a virtuous man, a healthy body becomes a great spiritual weapon.  Rather than dragging themselves around by severe fasts, they abound with energy for winning souls to the Kingdom of God.  The beauty of their soul is matched with a certain beauty of body.  Holiness has a beauty all its own, a beauty that ought to radiate to the body even if it will never be matched in this world.

I have seen numerous articles floating about with regards to New Year’s Resolutions for Christians.  Almost all of them poo-poo “bodily” resolutions like getting back in shape because they suffer from a dualistic view of man that somehow puts the body and the soul at enmity with each other.  We may not be trousered apes, but we also are not angels.  A Christian knows that she is both and soul—she does not have a body and soul, but instead is a body and soul.  Those things that are truly good for the body redound to the soul and vice versa.  In other words, things that are good are good for the whole person.  As form of the body, the soul has a certain precedence, but nevertheless exercising the body is something that holy people do.

I would like to suggest that many Christians fail in their New Year’s resolutions precisely because they fail to see the need to train the whole person.  They may make resolutions to pray more, read Scripture more, etc, but then lack the bodily discipline to get out of bed to do these things.  They may be too tired because of poor health.  On the other hand they may promise to work out X number of days, but fail because they do not have the necessary virtue to persevere.  They fail to grasp that for the Christian, working out can be a spiritual practice (c.f.   ), or more accurately a practice done by a perfectly integrated Christian.

Asceticism in Practice

What would this new form of asceticism look like?  For starters we should have some regular form of moderate to intense exercise—always with its proper end in mind so as to keep us moderated.  From an ex-competitive bodybuilder I can tell you that physical exercise can become addictive especially as you begin to see positive body changes and so we must always remember why we are doing it.

There are other, more common sense things we can do as well—especially when it comes to food.  In God’s goodness, eating, because it is necessary for life, brings with it some pleasure.  But pleasure is not its purpose.  Its purpose is to produce health and strength.  It is in this spirit that we should always approach food and avoid snacking between meals and overeating.

This approach also helps us to rediscover the difference between merely eating and a meal.  A meal is meant to be a sign of a shared life together as they share something that cannot be lived without.  There may be a lot of eating, but very few meals.  In writing about gluttony, St. Gregory the Great describes the dangers of falling into the deadly sin of gluttony not only by eating too much, but also too expensively, too daintily prepared, too quickly and too often.  When our meals are more focused on who we are with and then the food, we are protected against this vice that acts as a gateway to the more serious sins of the spirit.

One other way the new asceticism is lived out is regarding getting enough sleep.  Often this simply means avoiding mind-numbing activities that typically keep us from falling asleep at a good time.  But it can also be an act of humility recognizing our own limitation and the number of things we can reasonably get done on a given day.  Most people find that when they set a hard and fast bed time, they not only feel better but waste less time during the day.  This is not to rule out vigils which are an important ascetical practice, but to say that these are an exception to what is otherwise an ordering of our lives that is patterned after God’s design.

Before closing, a point of clarification regarding the two approaches.  They are equally applicable to all stages of our Christian life.  It is not as if you graduate from the first approach and adopt the second.  We will never fully conquer the effects of original sin and so we will need to first approach.  Likewise, we are redeemed and ever-growing in our freedom and so the second approach will also be necessary.

St. Paul tells Timothy that “while bodily training is of some value, Godliness is of value in every way” (1Tim 4:8).  Christians, especially in our day, tend to ignore the first part and wonder why they are not as Godly as they could be.  Embracing asceticism once again, will go a long way in accomplishing this.

Thanksgiving and Gratitude

Virtue,

We might call it the “Black Friday creep”—for years the start time for Black Friday has crept closer and closer to Thanksgiving Day.  This year many retailers will be open for longer hours on Thanksgiving Day, threatening to make the holiday little more than a drive-thru meal.  The tug of war really is between two outlooks on life—one based on envy with the need to get the best deals on the latest things and gratitude at being satisfied with what you already have.   Thanksgiving Day is about gratitude and therefore is celebrated best when we have worked to cultivate this virtue.  Therefore it seems fitting to offer a reflection on this virtue.

black-friday-riot

 

To begin, a word about the celebrating of secular holidays like Thanksgiving.  As Christians who believe in a God who acts within human history (i.e. within the secular), we should not object to the celebration of these holidays.  What we should object to however is when they become infused with a secularized mentality.  Gratitude by its nature must have an object toward which one is grateful.  To say “I am thankful” is the same as going into a restaurant and simply saying “I order.”  Just as you need to identify the food you want to eat, you must also identify a person you are thankful to.  In the United States, the Person towards which we are thankful to is God.  Even Barack Obama, no friend of religion, echoes the sentiments of Washington and Lincoln in his own Thanksgiving Day proclamations calling for gratitude to “Almighty God.”  Without this acknowledgment, Thanksgiving becomes just another day to “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you will die.”  As GK Chesterton may once said (quoting another author), “the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful, and has nobody to thank.”  No one ultimately can be grateful to “the processes of history.”

Just knowing who we are grateful to however is not enough.  To keep Thanksgiving from becoming “Thanks-taking” we need to make sure we are exercising the virtue of gratitude properly.

Fr. Hardon’s Catholic Dictionary defines gratitude as the “virtue by which a person acknowledges, interiorly and exteriorly, gifts received and seeks to make at least some return for the gift conferred.”  Gratitude is both affective and effective.  The affective element consists in both “thanks-reflecting” and “thanks-saying.”  The effective element consists in “thanks-giving.”  Most of us only associate gratitude with “thanks-saying” and therefore miss the virtue in its fullness.

“Thanks-reflecting” consists in, as St. Thomas says, the “recollection of (divine) benefits.” It is this first part that in many ways is the most important.  It is the time when we count and name our blessings.  If you read the first Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of George Washington, he enumerates the things for which the country should be grateful— “the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.”  In other words, it is not enough to say who we are thankful to, but we must also say what we are thankful for.  There is great benefit to doing this because it only strengthens our gratitude.  As we begin to enumerate all the ways in which God has blessed us we will grow to thank Him for everything, including our sufferings, able to “give thanks in every circumstance” (1 Thes 5:18).

When St. Thomas discusses gratitude in the Summa (S.T. II-II, qq.106-107), he treats it as a sub-virtue of justice.  What St. Thomas is emphasizing is that when we speak of the “debt of gratitude,” it means that we owe something in return for the favors that are done for us.  We certainly owe the words of thanks, but we must also be prepared to repay our benefactor.  This is why we speak of “thanks-giving” and not just “thanks-saying.”  This notion of a “debt of gratitude” is often lost on us and we assume that merely saying thanks is enough.

There is a danger of seeing gratitude as being about quid pro quo—like sending Thank You notes for Thank You notes.  But it is something much more than that.  When given a gift, there are two things that should be considered—the affection of the heart of the giver and the gift.  It is the affection that should be returned immediately (that is we should express our thanks) and then the gift itself in a timely manner.  This applies not only to our human relationships but especially when we begin speaking of God’s gifts to us.

God gives out of sheer gratuity.  He does not benefit at all from the gifts He bestows and He bestows them simply because He is love.  And, most importantly He is a joyful giver.  While we may not be able to return the affection to God directly, it is with joy and sheer gratuity that we celebrate Thanksgiving with those God has placed in our lives.

What about the gifts?  How can we return to God anything that is proportional to the gifts He has given us?  The psalmist gives us a clue when he asks the same question:

“How can I repay the LORD for all the great good done for me? I will raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.  I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.” (Ps 116:12-14)

 

Anyone reading this will immediately recognize the Eucharistic connotation of the “cup of salvation”   and recall to mind that the word Eucharist (or Eucharistia) is Greek for “thanksgiving.”  What the Spirit is telling us through the voice of the Psalmist is that the person who wants to repay his debt of gratitude to God will faithfully, actively and regularly participate in the Mass.  Thanksgiving Day will not be complete unless you start the day with Mass.  The Eucharist is man’s greatest gift back to God.

Gratitude is so important because it makes the hearts of the giver and the receiver the same.  This happens really and truly when we receive the Eucharist.  Our hearts become united to the Sacred Heart.  It is from the human heart of Jesus that God gives us the Eucharist and it is this heart that is meant to be formed in all of us.  The formation of the Heart of Jesus in us begins with gratitude.

As I have said any number of times, one of the ways that Catholics can recapture the culture is to celebrate holidays like only Catholics can.  We are not so other-worldly that we do not see the goods God has placed in this world for our enjoyment.  We do not merely thank God for His spiritual benefits, but also the freedom He has given us to use the material gifts in the way He intended when He bestowed them upon us.  This shatters the delusion about Christianity that many people operate under.  When we put the joy of being Catholic on display, holidays like Thanksgiving can be a powerful means of evangelization.  As Hillaire Belloc once said, “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine.  At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!