Ten lepers were cleansed, but only one
of them returned to thank Jesus.
Luke 17
The opposite of “feelings of
gratitude” are “feelings of entitlement.” It is the difference between “thank
you” and “I deserve it!” Over the years,
many parents have resonated with this famous sad line from Shakespeare’s King
Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”
Some government and church programs
start out as a way to help people, but sometimes they end up leaving people
with a sense of entitlement, a feeling that those services are actually owed to
them. Many recent studies say that narcissism and a sense of entitlement has
risen significantly higher in our country in recent years. Even Time Magazine
named the word “ME” as the “person of the year” back in 2006. Entitlement is
the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special
treatment. People with a sense of entitlement see no need to say “thank you”
because they have come to believe that they deserve to be taken care of and
have things given to them.
When I worked in the seminary, I
learned that even a few seminarians, after being “taken care of” throughout
their seminary years, sometimes leave the seminary with attitudes of
“entitlement,” feelings of deserving special treatment especially since they
will be priests during a time of priest shortages. In my
transition-out-of-the-seminary class, I spent one whole class teaching them to
say "thank you." Sometimes, I wondered whether they had ever heard of
the words, “thank you!” I reminded them to thank their seminary teachers, the
many people in their dioceses who financially supported them, their vocation
directors and even the seminary kitchen workers and janitors before they left.
Sadly, many of them had never even thought about doing that before I mentioned
it to them. I always began that specific class with a bit of cowboy wisdom,
“When you get to where you are going, take care of the horse you rode in on!”
One glaring symptom of our culture may be that growing sense of entitlement.
When I “googled” the phrase “you deserve it,” I found no less than 322,000,000
sites!
In the gospel today, Jesus heals ten
desperate lepers, nine were Jews and one was a foreigner, but only one of the
ten returned to say “thank you” and he was the foreigner! Why? Did the Jewish
lepers think it was merely Jesus’ job, as a fellow Jew, to heal people? Did
they think, “Why should I thank him for doing what he is supposed to do?” This
story reminds me that our sense of entitlement may even include God! Have we
grown to believe that it’s God's job to take care of us because somehow we
“deserve it?” Why are we so ready to be mad at God when things go wrong and yet
never think of God when things go right, much less offer our thanks? As a
priest, I get pulled into situations all the time where people are angry at God
for this or that disappointment, but I can't remember ever having many people
call me to tell me the wonderful things God has done for them!
Entitlement is an attitude that
“life owes me something,” or “other people owe me something” or “God owes me
something.” Our culture is constantly barraging us with messages that feed
those feelings of entitlement starting when we are babies. Back windows of
mini-vans used to announce “baby on board.” Kindergartners were taught to sing,
“I’m special.” McDonald’s built an entire campaign around the slogan
“You deserve a break today.” Another company proclaimed “Pamper yourself with
Calgon!” Another ad campaign told us “You owe it to yourself to buy a Mercedes
Benz.” Clairol told us to change our hair color, because “you are worth it.”
We are even conditioned by the Bill
of Rights, which focuses on our entitlements. We certainly have a right to the pursuit of
happiness, but we actually have no "rights" to happiness itself! (repeat)
The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, focus on our responsibilities and obligations.
Demanding our rights, while shirking our responsibilities, is always a recipe
for losing our so-called “rights.”
When we feel entitled, gratitude is
impossible because we believe that things are owed to us. If you’re like
me and really sit down and think about it, we would probably have a whole list
of things we feel entitled to, and when we don’t get them, we feel cheated.
If we start believing that a
favorable turn of events in life is owed to us, and then when things don’t turn
out favorably, we feel angry, resentful or frustrated. We begin feeling we have
been ripped-off and cheated out of what we really deserve. In reality, entitlement is
a lie, a perversion of the truth. The truth is life owes us nothing and
everything is a gift. When I was designing my tombstone, which is in place and
ready, I took that reality into account. That's why it says at the top,
"Simply Amazed - Forever Grateful."
Gratitude is the only response to
the realization that everything in life is a gift. We deserve nothing.
Ultimately, everything is a gift. So, saying thank you is more than just good
manners. It’s good spirituality. “Thank you” is the simplest and most powerful
prayer a person can say.
Why are we Catholics, who are so
blessed in so many ways, not beating down the doors of our churches to give
thanks to God every weekend end? We have every reason to be grateful because we
have come so far! Being Catholic wasn’t even legal in the early days of this
country. Many of our great, great grandparents were uneducated, dirt-poor
immigrants from equally poor Catholic countries who endured persecution. We,
their ancestors, have so often forgotten to be thankful for how far we have
come because of their sacrifices!
The Church calls us together each
weekend to celebrate the Eucharist. The word eucharist means "to give thanks." Why is there not a rush to offer thanks within our parish communities? Could
part of it be that we have come to believe that everything we have is something
we earned and we are therefore entitled to it? Could part of the drop in Mass
attendance be a part of our sense of entitlement? Maybe if we were to discover once
again that everything we have is on loan, maybe we would again be compelled to
gather in great numbers with other “Eucharistic” people, people who need to
express their gratitude, on a weekly basis. “Feeling gratitude and not
expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” (William Arthur
Ward)
Challenged by the nine no-show
lepers in the gospel today, let’s all take a good hard look at our lives and
everything in them and remember that it’s all a gift! "There are no pockets in shrouds!" We take nothing with us when we reach the end! Let’s resolve today and
every day to be that one cured leper who bothered to return and give thanks.
When I was in the seminary from age
14-26, I was always wanting to give my mother something but never had the
money. Looking back, what I gave her was what she needed most and that was my
attention and appreciation. I liked to make her laugh, be with her and dream
with her about “what I was going to do for her someday when I was ordained and
had some money.”
Lacking money, I gave
her time and attention. During breaks from the seminary, we would stay up late
at night just talking. She never complained, but I always wondered if she
didn’t often feel that people were more interested in what she could do for them
than what they could do for her. I have no regrets now that she is gone. I
couldn't give her lavish gifts, but I am proud to say that I expressed my
appreciation to her freely and often.
That's exactly why we
are here today - to say "thank you" to God the source of everything
we have! As the spiritual teacher Meister Eckhart said, "If the only
prayer you ever say in your entire life is “thank you,” it will be
enough!"
