Simple Act of Gratitude is a book that tells the story of an inspiration, the writing of 365 Thank You Notes, and how John Kralik’s life was changed from a life full of debts and disasters, to learning to be grateful for the life he had.
I decided that I would try this too, and so I did starting after last Thanksgiving. I still have 4 to go! The first hundred thank you notes mailed-out were easy but then I ran out of the addresses of people I knew, so I began to send “thank you” emails and texts.
I would often think to myself, “I haven't sent any thank you messages lately, and I’m getting behind,” and so I would look for opportunities to thank people as I went about my week.
Three things I noticed: I felt better; it destroyed resentments, and it helped keep my intentions pure.
1). According to research by Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California – Davis, practicing gratitude on a daily basis reduces stress hormones by 23%. It can even help detoxify a workplace at a biochemical level. According to Emmons, it lowers levels of creatinine and C-reactive protein, and helps reduce negative emotions such as envy, resentment, regret and depression.
Here is a real example that some of you already know--
On November 15, 2016, Wanda Dench sent a group text to her family members reminding them what time they would be celebrating Thanksgiving dinner at her house. She didn’t realize that one of her grandsons had changed his cell number, and so she accidentally sent the text a teen named Jamal Hinton.
Hinton was surprised and amused when he got the Thanksgiving invitation. He texted back and asked who it was from?
Dench texted back that it was from “Your grandma.” Since Hinton’s grandmother doesn't text, Jamal knew that Dench had the wrong number. He asked her to text him a picture. She did. Then Hinton texted her a picture. Dench is white. Hinton is black. She probably was not his grandmother. After sharing a good laugh about the mistaken invitation, Dench then texted to say that Hinton was still welcome to join her family for Thanksgiving Dinner. And so, he did. A mistaken invitation has turned into a great friendship between the two families. Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton are continuing their sweet annual meetup today even though the Arizona grandmother lost her husband to COVID-19 last year.
2). Regarding the second benefit I noticed from writing all those thank you messages was that it destroyed resentments.
Are you humbly grateful or grumbly hateful?
Henri J. M. Nouwen’s classic, “How Gratitude Breaks the Chains of Resentment” says that resentment makes us cling to negative feelings; gratitude allows us to let go. Resentment makes us prisoners of our passions. Gratitude helps us to transcend our compulsions to follow our vocation.
Resentment exhausts us by complicated jealousies and ambiguities, stirring up destructive desires for revenge. Gratitude takes our fatigue away and gives us new vitality and enthusiasm.
3). Finally, regarding gratitude helping to keep my intentions pure-
Just like resentment entangles us in endless distractions, pulling us down to banal preoccupations. Gratitude anchors our deepest self beyond this world and allows us to be involved without losing ourselves. (Nouwen Spiritual Formation). Researchers have found that trait levels of gratitude were associated with pure altruism or greater response to charity-gains than self-gains in the reward system of the human brain. Spiritually, purity of heart means rectitude of intention, not hypocrisy, and it also means to purify our hearts of every evil; in this way one’s heart will return to being that pure image of God in our own soul, as in a mirror, so could "see God" in our contemplation and prayer.
The Cultivation of Pure Altruism via Gratitude: Karns, C. M., Moore, W. E. I., & Mayr, U. (2017). The
Cultivation of Pure Altruism via Gratitude: A functional MRI Study of Change with Gratitude Practice. Frontiers
in Human Neuroscience, 11(December), 599.
I want to end this on the topic of writing thank you notes—
One of the ways that Israel stimulated a sense of gratitude and fidelity was remembering the exodus from captivity to liberation: “remember that you were once slaves...remember that it was God who liberated you and brought you to a land of promise.
They did not write thank you notes, but a sacred writer was inspired by the Holy Spirit and that inspiration became what we know today as Exodus 15:1-8 and Deuteronomy 5:15.
An order confirmation email is a message that a merchant like Amazon sends immediately after the customer completes a purchase.
Thank you for your order.
Eucharist comes from the Greek word for “thanksgiving.”
God the father asked Jesus a hard thing, and so Jesus suffered and died for us, to make sure we put our faith and hope in Him.
To worship at Mass is to order the whole of one’s life toward the living God, and, in doing so, to become interiorly and exteriorly rightly ordered. (Bishop Barron), so we can say, after we receive Holy Communion, “Thank you, Father, I offer you Jesus’, body, blood, soul, and divinity, for the salvation of the world. Forgive me for my venial sins and give me the holy spirit to repent from them. Please save me from temptations and remove my uncleanness. Help me offer my whole life to you.”
And Jesus will say to our hearts, thank you, your communion prayer has been received.
Amen.
