GRATEFUL HEARTS

Whether we will admit it or not, even privately to ourselves alone, each of us has more than he or she will ever need: need, not want. We have more than enough. I was reminded of this two weeks ago when I went back to my seminary (Roman Catholic, where I lived for twelve years for my high school, college and theology education) for a high school reunion.

   Those of us who gathered had not been back for some years, many for over forty years. We toured the old buildings where we ate and slept and studied and prayed and recreated all those years ago. We climbed the stairs to the freshmen dorm where the 89 of us slept side by side in one large room. We found one of the lockers, probably 18 inches wide, 18 inches deep and five feet tall in which we placed all the clothes we wore. We always had to have enough clothing for two weeks’ worth of laundry and a little bit extra in case some clothing was not returned because it was misplaced into someone else’s laundry bag (long story and for another time).

   When we recalled those days, we wondered how we survived because we certainly never thought we were deprived in any way, not materially anyway. We could not imagine any of our children living the way we did. They would claim cruelty and assert they were being deprived of the necessities of modern living. I suppose, if tried, we would be convicted because neither they nor a jury of their peers would understand. But we were grateful for what we had. And we had all that we needed.

   We still do. We always do as a person and as a people, even as a church, especially as a church. All the resources we need to be the people, the parish, the congregation God calls us to be we already have. “We can’t” should never be a part of our vocabulary. We can do whatever it takes, whatever our faith demands of us. We already have all the gifts, all the talents, all the financial resources at our disposal. Whether we dispose of them or not is another matter. What matters is that God has blessed us with enough, nay, more than enough. For that we should be grateful; our hearts should be full of thanks.

   The adage that “God will provide” may seem trite were it not true. In fact, gratefully, thankfully, God has already provided. Do we need people to teach Sunday School? Do we need people to provide for coffee hours? Do we need people to work at Loaves and Fishes, to serve meals for the poor, to visit the sick, to…? Well, the list is endless. The answer, of course, is both “yes” and “no”. Yes, we need people to fulfill those ministries. No, we do not, because, gratefully, we already have them among us.

   We don’t need more people, although the more we have, the more ministry we can do. What we need is more of us releasing the gifts we already have instead of keeping them either hidden or to ourselves. When we begin to count our blessings, we soon realize just how gifted, how blessed we are. We respond by giving thanks to God for those gifts of time and talent and treasure, and then with grateful hearts sharing them with others.  Or, and not to beat a dead horse, because it’s very much alive: its “Matthew 25…and all that jazz” all over again.      WJP