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Hello Ladies!
This week we're called to find gratitude - it's one of the first social skills we teach our kids ("Say Thank You!"). Sometimes making a list of things I'm grateful for can feel trite, my own gratitude insincere. But lately I stumbled across one of my favorite quotes: "What punishments of God are not gifts?" What? That sounds WILD and totally contrary to our faith, right? But hear me out.
I discovered the quote in a 2019 interview between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert, discussing their experiences with grief. Stephen lost his father and two brothers at a young age, and Anderson's mother had recently passed. Stephen quips the line, from J.R.R. Tolkien, "What punishments of God are not gifts?". Anderson, incredulous, presses Stephen if he actually believes it. Stephen pauses, then smiles as he responds:
"Yes. It's a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that.But if you are grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it. And so, at a young age. I suffered something, so that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life with friends or with my wife or with my children, is that I have some understanding that everybody is suffering and however imperfectly, acknowledge their suffering and connect with them and to love them in a deep way that makes you grateful for the fact that you have suffered so that you can know that about other people. I want to be the most human I can be, and that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things that I wish didn't happen because they gave me a gift."
I can't say that I truly live this idea yet, but "chewing on it" in prayer helps me deepen my own understanding of gratitude. It also reminds me of St. Josephine Bakhita's story - the idea that she would be grateful for her experiences of enslavement as something that ultimately put her on a path toward baptism, and union with her beloved Jesus... it's been such a foreign experience to me. I don't know if I could have responded with such grace to such suffering.
It's not that the sinful things done to us are good, or that the evil things that happened were good or actively willed by God. God has an active will, which makes things happen, and permissive will, which allows things to happen. We believe that God can still bring us close to Him despite the evil that happens to us. Suffering can transform us, if we offer it back to God as a sacrifice. And we might even get to the point where we are so close to Jesus that we see His had in our lives, that we might even become grateful for everything that leads us to Him.
-Katelyn
P.S. In 2022, Anderson Cooper interviewed Stephen Colbert again, and the two once again consider grief and gratitude, using their 2019 conversation as a springboard. Click here to check it out.
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