Gratitude

As I read today’s (Thursday, August, 23, 2007 ) readings in preparation
for this meditation the main lesson of today’s Scriptures seemed
obscure. The first reading being about war, battles, and places of
battles, and about abargain with God that ended in human sacrifice. The
second reading being about rude guests and fashion tips for wedding
goers. But then it occurred to me that both readings connect to each
other and teach and us a very simple but very important lesson about
showing gratitude to God, for all He has done for us.

Often we are too busy to look at and take account of all the good things God has done for us.

And yet, if we stop, and take a moment, the list of things that God has done for us quickly fills.

Lets just list a few things we all have to be thankful for each day:
We all were born
We all woke up this morning.
We all are loved by our God.
We are all called to share fully in His Love
here at the Altar

Theseare just a few examples common to us all, each one of us could think up a long list of other things that each of us individually has to be thankful for. How often do we really stop to thank God for these things?

In today’s Gospel, we hear the Parable of the wedding feast, God invites friends to come, freely, and when they fail to come he invites strangers to the banquet.

A wedding banquet was an expensive affair in those days: food, wine, and provisions had to be made for guests and usually the banquet went on for several days, since friends and family often came from far away.

So to invite guests to your house and have them ignore your invitation was extremely rude, extremely ungrateful.

The parable teaches that God’s generosity goes beyond inviting his friends, when the invited guests don’t come God invites strangers. In a day and age where just getting enough food to survive was difficult, inviting anyone and everyone was very generous.

There was just one requirement—that you be presentable. You are invited to someone else’s party, where you eat and drink as much as you like, and all that is asked is that you prepare yourself. This doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Likewise, All are invited to the banquet of God, we have done nothing to merit
this invitation God invites us out of graciousness.

Still, there is an expectation that those who are invited will respond, and those who respond will prepare themselves.

This theme is central in our first reading; Jephthah asked a favor of God, promising to give God whoever came to greet him, when he returned home victorious as a human sacrifice.

I have got to believe that when Jephthah made the promise he either didn’t really believe that God would save him, he really didn’t believe that he would ever have
to keep his promise to God, or he didn’t consider that someone he cares about would be the one he vowed to sacrifice. God granted Jephthah’s favor, and so, he returned home, and was greeted by his only child, his daughter, who came to greet him with song and dance, only to find our that her father had signed her death warrant.

The concept of human sacrifice, is foreign to us today, but don’t let this dimension get in the way. Remember all scripture has two authors—Man and God. Setting the historical and cultural context aside, the theological point spoken by the divine author is clear: We owe God everything, for the good things he does for us, everything, including what we value most in the world.

When we enter into relationship with God we gamble everything, just as Jephthah did.
We ask God to be our God, to be our Lord to protect and defend us in time of need
conscious of the fact that as part of this deal, as his dependants, we owe him everything and should be willing to give everything to him, confident that He loves
us, that He knows and always does what is truly good for us. This is true faith in God and true gratitude.

Jephthah returned home, and saw that it was his daughter that he would lose, and of course this saddened him, but Jephthah showed true gratitude by keeping his vow to
the Lord. Like Jacob before him, he was willing to give God everything that mattered.

When we need something from God, as Christians, we are on our knees to pray for it—but if we get what we want, or once we get what we need, then what? Then what do we do? How often do we, in times of desperation, make a bargain with God and then when things work out, realize that what we promised was too steep, to valuable to us to actually give God.

We owe God everything, but God does not demand sacrifices from us, human or other, as payment. As we heard God say in today's Psalm, “I desire neither sacrifices nor oblation.” Make no mistake, Jephthah is not buying God’s favor with his promise of sacrifice. Rather, he is showing gratitude by keeping his promise, just as we show
gratitude to God when we keep our word, especially the promised we make at Mass, at Baptism, Confirmation, and Marriage.

This attitude of gratitude that God demands of us manifests it self in prayer, and
preeminently in the Mass, BUT, I think the first reading also suggests another important form of gratitude and thanksgiving—abandonment to the will of God.

Jephthah made this promise to God, and must keep it. While TODAY we might not promise to Sacrifice our children, since as Christians we know that Goddoesn ’t want this, sometimes God’s plan for the world, does require hard sacrifices: The loss of a child or a parent to sickness; Disappointments in our family or career; Personal pain and suffering.

When faced with these difficulties in life it strikes me that we can look at them in two different ways, we can resent them, focusing on the negative, sometimes even blaming God! Or, we can accept them in gratitude, focusing not on the difficulty itself, but on all the good things that preceded the difficulty.

The lose of life s always hard, I remember last summer visiting catholic patients at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford. One lady, in particular, stood out to me I loved to visit her, because even though she was dying, As in truth we all are, she was so peaceful, in fact so joyful about all the good things God had given her.

Its not that she was not sad at the prospect of death, but that she accepted that life is a gift worthy of thanksgiving, even when it is only given for a short time.

I find the response of Jephthah’s daughter in this story most interesting! Learning that her father promised God her life, she reacts not with fear or anger, but consigned to do right by God. Like Jesus,Jephtah’s daughter freely returned to accept death in gratitude to God for the love he shows us.

All of us are called to make both our lives and our deaths a worthy sacrifice, which we offer up to God, in Thanksgiving. This is part of the sacrifice that we offer here on the altar and this is our duty and loving response in gratitude to God.