The Language of Giving Thanks

Have you ever had the experience of giving a gift to someone, yet hearing nothing in response? Or conversely, have you ever received a gift or deed so precious that you found yourself overflowing with gratitude to the giver?

Gift Means Relationship

Both of these scenarios draw us into the dynamic of gift, praise and relationship. A gift can never exist in isolation, but springs from a context of love, a self-sacrificial outpouring from giver to recipient. We who receive the gift are free to respond however we choose, yet as today’s Gospel reading illustrates, the only fitting response to a real gift is the act of giving thanks.

Consider the scene from our reading: ten lepers have gathered and decided to come before Jesus to ask Him for healing. Together, they raise a simple but sincere cry: “Jesus, master, have pity on us.” He bids them to go to the priests, and as they walk, they discover themselves healed. The very miracle they sought has been generously granted. Yet out of the ten, only one is compelled to turn back, for, “seeing that he was healed, he glorified God in a great voice, and fell on his face at His feet, thanking him.”

Why Give Thanks?

Does it matter whether we give thanks? After all, our gratitude adds nothing to God. In that extraordinary logic of faith, however, giving thanks actually transforms and enriches us, the recipient. The expression of thanks re-aligns our hearts, conforming us in humility to Christ.

What does it actually mean to thank someone? When we pronounce our thanks to anyone, we invoke a relationship between the giver and oneself, as if to say, “I am indebted to you for the gift you have given me freely.” Whatever our relationship was before, there is something deeper now, for you have poured out something of yourself to me. To give thanks signifies a bond.

The Language of Thanks

Different languages have captured this in different ways. In Portuguese, the phrase obrigada or obrigado literally means “obliged,” describing the speaker himself or herself in relation to the giver. The Italian word grazie signifies “grace,” declaring the speaker’s recognition that a great favor has been bestowed upon me. Our English “thank you” arises from an original sense of “I think of you,” or “I remember you.” All these phrases reveal the spirit of relationship implicit when we say, “Thank you.”

One of my most cherished foreign phrases, however, is the Greek word for thanks, “efharisto.” Many years ago, when I traveled to Greece, I took special pleasure in uttering this new and rather melodious word. It seemed to drop from my lips with mysterious beauty. Long after my trip I still remembered that experience of saying efharisto, efharisto, to the Greeks I met.

Years later during my conversion of faith I discovered why this word had lingered with me. It is in the Eucharist, the sacrificial offering of Jesus, that we are given the greatest gift we may ever know on this side of heaven. And thus, we can respond only with the words of thanksgiving, “Eucharist,” proclaiming the great grace or “charis” that has been poured out upon us.

Friends, I invite you today to reflect upon this power inherent in the act of giving thanks to God. Savor the love and the gift that is implicit within our words of thanks. The Lord delights in our expressions of thanksgiving not for His sake, but for ours. When we give thanks, we are drawn deeper into His love for us. And thus into our full flourishing as human persons.

[Readings: Wis 6:1-11; Lk 17:11-19]