TRANSCRIPT:
I’ve been listening to Father Gallagher’s podcasts on the Examen- St. Ignatius’ approach to the evening examination of conscience. And in particular, Father Gallagher was talking about gratitude. I’m ashamed to say that sometimes it’s late at night, I’m doing my examen, and I prompt myself to think, “Well, what am I grateful to God for this day?” and I don’t necessarily always have that immediate answer right at the tip of my tongue.
So, what I’ve done is I’ve developed this approach to what I call ‘radical gratitude’ where I start to just list the basic material things that I enjoy: my lifestyle, indoor plumbing, hot water, electricity, heating and cooling, water that’s been treated that I know is not going to make me sick, and so on and so forth, right?
And as I’ve shared this with some men, I found that for some of them even that is as difficult. Maybe they’re just not living a life of gratitude. And so just thinking, “Wait a second, hot water? I mean, the Romans had that, right? Everybody enjoys that today, essentially, in the developed world.”
And so my response to that is to think about all the luxuries that you’ve enjoyed in your life that Our Lord never had: indoor plumbing, a mattress to sleep on, exotic foods from all over the world, pain medicine. Basic things. And hopefully this gap between the luxury of your own life and Our Lord’s will help to foster that sense of gratitude; at least, that’s the approach that I have taken in my personal life. And this begins to form the basis of a life of gratitude in just our material things that will allow us to become more grateful when it comes to the spiritual things and foster that lifestyle of gratitude. I hope this has been helpful to you.