By DONALD DeMARCO
Commutative justice demands that we repay what we owe. If I owe my brother $10, I should pay him $10. Justice in this sense is a proportion between the debt and the repayment. It is morally and often legally binding.
There is a similar proportion on a higher level though it does not carry a strict obligation. It invites a person to give freely in response to something he has been freely given. A gift should be repaid with gratitude, whereas a debt must be repaid in according to a predetermined amount. The word “should” indicates that the receiver ought to be grateful, but is under no compelling or legal obligation to express this virtue. Nonetheless, the relationship between gift and gratitude exists on a more exalted plane because it involves an act of freedom on both the giver as well as the receiver. Both gift and gratitude flow from sources of freedom.
If I give someone a bouquet of flowers, the normal response on the part of the receiver is to put it in a container of water. In this case, the recipient expresses thanks by indicating that because the gift is valued, its life should be cared for and extended.
Our own life is a gift. We should respond to it by showing our appreciation for it by cherishing it, protecting it, and doing what we can to ensure that it is brought to its fullness. As G.K. Chesterton has said, “Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he puts in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?” (Orthodoxy). The atheist lives in poverty because he has no one to thank.
According to an ancient Jewish legend, when God finished creating the universe, He asked the angels what they thought of it. One of them replied that the universe is so perfect that nothing was wanting except a voice to offer God an expression of gratitude. Gratitude, we might say, is the virtuous applause we offer as a response to the beauty of the cosmos.
I have a friend who saved his son’s life by donating him one of his kidneys. The son had apparently damaged both his kidneys by allowing himself to become hugely overweight. After the transplant, which was successful, the son showed his appreciation for this great gift by losing weight and becoming more fit.
After a while, however, the son resumed his bad habits and added considerable weight to his frame. The father, needless to say, cannot ask for his kidney to be returned, but hopes that his son expresses appropriate gratitude by achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. The poignant words of Shakespeare come to mind, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
Luke (17:12-19) recounts the story of the ten lepers whom Jesus cured. What appears more startling about this episode is not the miraculous cure, extraordinary as that is, but the fact that only one of the ten returned to offer thanks. Christ asked the one grateful person, “Were not all ten made clean? The other nine, where are they?”
To be cured of the dreadful disease of leprosy should warrant an expression of gratitude. Why are human beings often so delinquent in saying, “Thank you”? It costs nothing yet means a great deal. The metaphysical poet George Herbert referred to this strange reluctance on the part of human beings to express proper gratitude when he wrote: “Thou hast given so much to me. Give me one more thing — a grateful heart.” Yet it is I, the receiver, who must freely offer thanks.
Padre Martinez, a Peruvian Jesuit, believed that gratitude is so highly fitting a response to God’s munificence that he trained himself to say Deo gratias four hundred times a day. He encouraged others to do the same. Lifelong gratitude seems appropriate for a lifetime life.
Beneficiary and benefactor should be bound to each other in a special alliance. The proper response to one virtue is another virtue. Benevolence should inspire gratitude. Cicero contended that gratitude is the mother of all virtues. Therefore, according to this Roman sage, gratitude should initiate a flow of other virtues.
“Say thank you,” the mother instructs her child whenever he receives a gift. Gratitude is the first step as child takes in establishing a reciprocal moral relationship with his elders, just as generosity inaugurates their moral relationship with him.
No gift should fall into the silent abyss of ingratitude. Gratitude is the appropriate reply to any act of generosity. We say “thank you” to God for the gift of life. We say “thank you” to a friend for his birthday present, even if we neither want it nor like it. Gratitude is an affirmation of solidarity.
We tend to lose sight of the need to be grateful as time goes by. We soon take things for granted and forget that our life is an ongoing gift that warrants ongoing thanks. Ingratitude is an injustice on a higher level than the one on which ordinary commutative justice operates. What could we give back to God according to the demands of strict justice to balance the ledger? No gift could possibly be proportionate to the largesse He has showered upon us. And yet, in the negative sense, it is an injustice to God not to show Him our gratitude.
Gratitude, though it is primarily directed to the benefactor, nonetheless confers benefits on the beneficiary. The grateful person is blessed inasmuch as his gratitude unites him with another and inclines him to use the gift he has received to his own advantage. The gift of life should inspire a gratitude that not only helps to establish a friendship with God, but a commitment to revere life and guide it to its fullness.
In this way, gratitude serves as a doorway to additional virtues. Ingratitude is a dead-end, and an injustice in the face of God’s prodigious generosity.
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