JEAN MAALOUF
The Healing Power of
gratitude
PHILIPPINES
THE HEALING POWER OF GRAtitude © 2019 by Jean Maalouf Published by Twenty-third Publications A Division of Bayard 185 Willow St., P.O. Box 180 Mystic, CT 06355, USA The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the U.S.A. All rights reserved. Published and distributed by Paulines Publishing House Daughters of St. Paul 2650 F. B. Harrison Street 1302 Pasay City, Philippines E-mail: edpph@paulines.ph Website: www.paulines.ph All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission of the Publisher. Cover design: Ann Marie Nemenzo, FSP 1st Printing 2019 ISBN 978-971-590-891-7 Areas of distribution: Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Macau
at the service of the Gospel and culture
Contents
Introduction Chapter One Perpetual Dissatisfaction
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Chapter Two “Deo Gratias” – Thanks be to God 33 Chapter Three Gratitude Therapy
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Conclusion 90
Introduction
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he desire for happiness is a universal desire–who in the world does not want to be happy? But the “how to be happy?” is the problem. Although the path to happiness remains unclear and controversial, gratitude is closely related to a happy life. Brother David SteindlRast observed remarkably: “Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy—because we will always want to have something else or something more.” The truth is that joy and gratitude go hand
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“Gratefulness in hand. We cannot be happy if we are not thankful. is the key to a happy life.” Why does gratitude generate
happiness? It does because it � makes us feel full, complete, whole, bursting with delight, and with the realization that we have everything we need—at least at that particular moment in time. At that particular moment, one feels the desire to spread the joy around by sending positive energy across space and time, by assisting someone in need, or by being present with a lonely person. This moment has the power to let us be aware more of how all of life is connected and how our blessings are never just for ourselves alone. They are given to us to be shared. Therefore gratitude leads to hospitality, compassion, openness, service, forgiveness, caring concern, reconciliation, empathy, and many other virtues. This is why Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was a philosopher and one of Rome’s greatest orators, summarized it with his famous line: “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” It does not cost much to say “thank you” in return for a gift or a favor. However, it is not that easy to have a grateful heart and it is not that easy to positively cope 2
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with the dark side of life. Indeed, “Gratitude very often daily challenges may is not only obstruct our view of our blessings, the greatest causing many of us to dwell on the of virtues, negative. When everything is rosy, but the parent smiling, and rewarding, it is easy to of all the others.” be grateful. But how about during times of pain and illness, loss and � grief, trouble and worry, violence and war? Can one be grateful during such times? Why should one be? This is where the challenge is, and this is where we are supposed to see with the eye of the heart because “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly, as wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The “assurance of things hoped for” (Heb 11:1) is not necessarily the instant recovery from our “Golgotha” of the day, but the recognition of the God of the Resurrection of the third day. Gratitude does this too. In this study, you will learn to look at the big picture and discover why and how we should be grateful all the time and in all circumstances. You will find reasons for reflecting deeply on the goodness of life. You will find the path to heal your wounds. You will find ways to attain the so desired wellness of a happy, healthy, and holy life. Gratitude does that. A wholehearted “thank Introduction
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you� will make us appreciate blessings we did not notice before, create or improve friendships and connections, replace negative attitudes with positive ones, generate an atmosphere of civility that seems absent in today’s world, and contribute in the healing of a lonely soul. Gratitude has the capacity to change lives. Miracles happen. What gratitude does is a miracle. Deo gratias (Thanks be to God).
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Chapter one
Perpetual Dissatisfaction “You have made us for yourself, [O Lord], and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you.” ■ Saint Augustine
O
ur deep and insatiable desire for more and more and more, blinds our eyes from seeing what we already have. This is one of the reasons that makes our mind and heart continuously restless and in perpetual eagerness for more, as if nothing is ever enough. In fact, we seem to believe the 5
popular false promise that dictates that getting more and more of what we want, whether we need it or not, will increase our happiness. Sooner rather than later, we realize that this is a lie because happiness is not there. Restless was our heart. Restless is our heart. Restless will our heart remain until the day the Infinite fills our never-ending dissatisfaction. No wonder St. Augustine summarized this existential reality in just a few words that still reverberate throughout the centuries. He wrote: “You have made us for yourself, [O Lord], and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you.� In addition, our attention in life is very often focused on the negative side of things. We seem captured by problems, troubles, and all that is going wrong in our personal lives, our communities, our nations, and the world. Stories abound about dissatisfactions, disappointments, brokenness, and unhappiness. We hear them at any time and in any place. The news media seem to make a better living when they report such stories. But why is that so? Why do we have this tendency to keep complaining? Why are we never satisfied? What Drives Us Why do we do the things we do? Why do we buy the things we buy? Why do we act the way we act? Why 6
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do we reject the things we reject? Why do we live the way we live? That is because they make sense to us. What drives us is what makes sense to us. We all are in the pursuit of meaning because there is no happiness without true meaning. The cell phone, that became for most of us the most cherished companion to the point that we can no longer imagine a life possible without it, is more than a cell phone. Beyond the simple fact of its existence, the cell phone has become a symbol of our identity, our connection with others, and the indispensable tool for our needs. When this happens, the cell phone takes on a life of its own and it creates a new culture with different scales of priorities and values. In a sense, we became the creation of what we created. It certainly is so when we believe all “We all are that is communicated to us through in the pursuit it, and we become the by-products of meaning of that communication – true or because there false, good or bad, right or wrong is no happiness – at the penalty of rejection from without true the new cyber-family and the latest meaning.” lifestyle. In this sense, not only can a cell phone provide us with a tool of � communication, it can also promise Perpetual Dissatisfaction
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a sense of identity, of values, of meaning, and of purpose in life. Here is the problem and it is not the cell phone itself – the cell phone is used as an example – or the car, or the house, or the bank account, or the job, or/and the like. The problem is what we make of them. Do we remain in charge or they become our masters? Who really is in charge here? The catastrophic devastation begins when what we create consumes us as human beings and drives our decisions that are based on transitory and shifting values—consumption, for example, is the major value in a throwaway culture and it has the capacity to generate more ways for more consumption. Of course economic and technological tools are useful and magnificent, but they are neither our wise masters nor should they have the last word in our life. What is true in technology, economics, and material things is also true in intellectual and even spiritual matters. A craving is a craving no matter what the object of a craving is. It could be for any technological device or any material thing. It could also be for other matters like craving for more relationships, more information, more books, more music, more incense, more crystals, more travels, even more spiritual retreats. The spiritual stuffs are of course good in themselves and they are 8
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recommended, but they should remain the tools not the goals by themselves. We should never lose the goal which is God for the tool which is the retreat. God is supposed to “drive” to a retreat so that a retreat can “drive” to God. Paradoxically, the search for spirituality can itself become a consuming process and that is the subtle danger of an immature understanding of religion. We should never reduce our spiritual life to our religious practices. It is an error to think that the pious, devotional, and obligatory things that we usually do demonstrate that we have a life of faith. Even prayer—who does not recommend prayer?—becomes a subtle kind of blasphemy if we think that God must now do certain things for us because of what we “Spiritual life did for God. A genuine spiritual life that is rooted in our relationship is not the way with Christ consists of what we are to get to heaven, in Christ rather than in what we do but the way to for him. This means that spiritual Christ who is life is not the way to get to heaven, the way, but the way to Christ who is the way, the truth, the truth, and the life. Then every and the life.” aspect of our life flows from that � relationship with Christ. Because Perpetual Dissatisfaction
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of that, every activity we do— eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing, thinking, resting—and no matter how significant or insignificant it is, becomes prayer, as St. Paul said, and an authentic aspect of spiritual life. With Christ at the center, everything becomes a living grace. In order to avoid the trap of � considering the external practices of religion as enough for truly being a man or a woman of God, the necessity for a true conversion or a “spiritual reboot” is of ultimate importance. Conversion is not only for an atheist who becomes a believer, or a sinner who becomes a virtuous person, or a persecutor of Christians who becomes a missionary for Christ. Conversion is for everyone and it should be done on a daily basis for no one ever arrives and no longer needs to convert. We all need to accept the grace of conversion and continuously seek a fuller life in Christ. Such an understanding can make all the difference in the world. It will make us concretely aware of the relativity of all things so that we can focus on the Absolute that gives meaning and purpose to the things
“Conversion is for everyone and it should be done on a daily basis for no one ever arrives and no longer needs to convert.”
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we may have. Then we will realize that we cannot be but grateful because everything is a gift since we are not entitled to anything. How true what Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” At a deep level, this would be the answer to our constant dissatisfaction and craving and complaining for never having enough. The Myth of More We all have met people who have every reason to be happy but they are not. They are constantly seeking to acquire more, to accumulate more, to travel more, to do more. They seem to find some happiness in the more itself, forgetting that “more,” by its very nature, is elusive and cannot be reached. One is continuously hungry for “more” and “more” of something. This is how some of us usually think: “I’ll be happy when I buy this car or that house,” or “I’ll be happy when I have that promotion,” or “I’ll be happy when I win that game,” and so it continues. And when they reach their goal, they want something else without an end in sight. “You can have it all … and you should,” some misguiding advisers would recommend, as if more is the answer to our neverending hunger.
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