Gratitude

I know myself, I know the way I write, and I know this blog is going to get very, um, onerous for some readers, so I might as well start with something light. Here's something I wrote a few days ago.

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Gratitude

There's a little parable about a girl who is tired of bearing her cross. She asks God if she can change her cross. God allows her to experiment with several other crosses. Each one, she finds, is somehow wrong for her. Finally, she finds a cross that fits her shoulders. To her surprise, it is her original cross, the very cross she wanted to give up. The story I'm about to tell is a little bit like that.

When I was in college, I heard a friend of mine, a Jesuit, give a talk at a prayer session, where he shared with the audience that the one grace he had constantly prayed for in the novitiate was the grace of a happy heart. It was a grace, he said, that he had been granted.

Looking at my friend's face, I knew it was true. He really was one of the happiest people I knew.

I felt moved by his story.

And envious.

I knew I didn't have a happy heart. I had happy moments, yes, but I also often had a heavy heart.

I wondered whether I should ask God for the same grace. And so sometimes I did. "Please God, give me the grace of a happy heart," I would pray. But each time I did I wondered whether it was the grace I ought to be asking for. Whether it truly was the grace for me.

I remembered being a young philosophy major. A teacher of ours had said in class that philosophy majors could be spotted a mile away: somehow they always seemed to be not quite at home with the world. And from that discomfort sprung their questions. And from those questions sprung philosophy.

And so even moreso, as I remained a philosophy student, I envied those with happy hearts but wondered if my heart was meant to be happy.

I also envied those with innocent hearts. I knew mine was not innocent. If anything, I seemed sometimes to be uncomfortably attuned to the pain of the world, sensitive to its despair. I was often angered by its injustice. And so I also wondered if I should ask for an innocent heart.

Once, some friends of mine said that I was very generous. Perhaps I have a generous heart?, I asked myself. But again, I knew it wasn't true. I knew better than anyone how selfish my heart really was. Is.

Over the past few years, however, I've realized that as He has patiently moulded me and formed me, He has already given me the grace that He knew was for me even before I knew I desired it.

I've been blessed with the grace of a grateful heart.

For all my sinfulness, my weakness, my faults -- beneath it all He gives me the heart with which to feel how overflowing and abundant His grace continues to be. Wondrously, sublimely, He continues to bless me, and bless me again with the eyes to see.