By DONALD DeMARCO
The word “thanks” is etymologically rooted in the word “thought.” With this in mind, G.K. Chesterton could say: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
Chesterton had a genius for expressing expansive ideas in a concise way. Many of his phrases belong to the province of compressed wisdom. In life, we either take things for granted or we offer thanks. The factor that causes us to stop in our tracks when we think about something extraordinary is wonder. That very wonder that prompts us to think also confers upon us a certain happiness. It is indeed wonderful to be alive! To be filled with wonder is at the same time to be suffused with happiness. As a result, rather than simply taking things in stride, we respond with gratitude and enjoy the benefits of a higher world.
Furthermore, gratitude must be directed to a person. We say, quite casually, “thank goodness,” or “thank Heaven,” or “thank your lucky stars.” Yet these are not the factors to which we owe our thanks.
Returning to the quotable GKC: “We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?” How easy it is to miss the obvious, being distracted by the superfluous! “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmastime,” the redoubtable Chesterton added, “why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”
Shakespeare has Henry VI exclaim, “O Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.” Gratitude is our heart’s applause to God’s generosity.
The very worst moment for the atheist is when he feels a compelling urge to be thankful, but has no one to thank. Thanks must be directed to a person because it is a person who is our benefactor. We thank God, and in so doing complement the Giver’s gift with the receiver’s gratitude.
But there is more to unlock in Chesterton’s bon mot. Along with thanks comes the duty to safeguard what we have been given. We do this with humility and restraint. We should be humble knowing that our gift is undeserved. And we should be restrained as a way of treasuring our gifts. “We should thank God for beer and Burgundy,” Chesterton adds, “by not drinking too much of them.”
Giving thanks is an expression of gratitude, but it also unlocks the door to humility and restraint. It is like saying, “How good of God to give me all these wonderful things that give me a sense of happiness.” I have done nothing to deserve them, but I will cherish them and make sure that I use them as God intended.
Giving thanks can be a personal matter that is expressed on a moment to moment basis. But it is also a worthwhile and laudable thing that it be celebrated nationally on an annual basis and in a more formal way. The fourth Thursday of November became Thanksgiving’s official federal holiday in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” This was an extraordinary gesture by America’s 16th president inasmuch as it was made during the Civil War. Even during the darkest hours, we can find something that can elicit our thanks.
The document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, in which he fervently implored “the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes of peace, harmony, tranquility, and Union.”
Giving thanks is also about having hope, for we do not believe that the gifts that God has bequeathed to us will be His last.
On May 4, 2014, Pope Francis offered a Mass of Thanksgiving for Pope St. John Paul II’s canonization. In his homily, referring to the Church’s new saint, he remarked that “in the moments of sadness and of dejection, when everything seemed lost, he never lost hope, because his faith and hope were fixed on God.”
May all of our thanksgivings be crowned by this kind of hope.
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(Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth & Charity Forum.)
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