It’s easy to feel thankful when things happen like we expect them to. It comes naturally.
But, how to feel and cultivate an attitude of gratitude before the frustrations, injustices, tragedies, wars and natural disasters we face routinely?
This question invites us to delve deeply and face a contradiction. Questions are invitations, sometimes uncomfortable ones, to go beyond the apparent and superficial. There are questions that are not answered simply by thinking more, but rather, by living with greater conscience, opening ourselves up to other perspectives.
The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote something that has stayed with me: “Be patient with everything that remains in your heart unresolved, and try to love the questions themselves, like rooms that are closed and books written in a foreign tongue … Live these questions daily. Perhaps, little by little, without you noticing it, some distant day, your life will lead you to a response.”
I like the expectation to “live” the response, because it’s not only a matter of reasoning. In fact, it’s contradictory to recognize that there’s something essential to be thankful for amid suffering.
It is not a matter of denying reality, but rather learning to see it in another way, from a more profound, transcendental perspective, open to complexity.
Gratitude is not solely a feeling: It’s a practice, one born from cultivating an attitude, a way of contemplating life. We nurture it by making time for small moments throughout the day to recognize people, gestures or simple events that remind us of the existence of kindness, solidarity and love.
Gratitude and suffering are not mutually exclusive. They can live in the same heart. Jesus experienced it in the Garden of Gethsemane; he sensed and felt fear about what could happen, without losing the intimate connection with his Father, with the essential, with love.
In the sacrament of the Eucharist, in thanksgiving, are the keys to understanding what Jesus proposes, what energizes us and gives us another perspective to the question posed initially: How to give thanks in times of suffering, confusion and chaos?
Consider Jesus, pursued by the religious authorities of his time, in the midst of a betrayal by one of his own, sitting at a table: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it and, giving it to his disciples, said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins’” (Matthew 26:20-29).
We have heard these words so many times that they have become routine and lost the power and the fire they carry. That’s why, to recall that moment, is not only to remember with our thoughts what happened, but to re-live “the essential memory” that is timeless, that allows us to experience emotionally the moment in which, in the midst of anguish, betrayal and suffering, love prevailed. He surrendered himself, gave thanks, blessed and forgave.
That is the invitation, the way to act like Jesus. It does not obligate us or threaten us. It’s an invitation not only to share bread and be in communion, but “to live the response,” to cultivate, even on the most difficult days, the act of giving thanks, even though there are no logical reasons to do so. We do this because we feel unconditionally loved by God, mysterious and unfathomable but close, who became one of us in Jesus, who revealed in his message that we are one with him.
Let us pray for the grace to live the Eucharist, not just to receive it. In complicated times like the ones we’re living, let’s stay alert, pray, and silence our interior to reclaim the fire and the power of his words and to radiate them, to bless and to give thanks.
