WE’VE ALL SINNED AGAINST GRATITUDE
LET’S TRY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT
(The reflection below has been posted for the last four Thanksgivings.)
It’s the kind of thing one hears from people who went to Catholic school back in the 1950s — how the good nuns taught them that a complete and well balanced prayer is based on the acronym, ACTS, and includes four key elements…
- Adoration
- Contrition
- Thanksgiving
- Supplication
Being a convert, I didn’t go to parochial school, but I would imagine that the prayers of Catholic schoolchildren back then probably contained plenty of supplication, especially at report card time. (Probably still do.)
Adoration was likely well covered also, given the pious practices in which Catholic kids of the ’50s were steeped. Just how much true contrition there was would’ve been anybody’s guess. But it’s the element of thanksgiving which I’d assume was least present.
Were we ’50s youngsters (Catholic or otherwise) grateful for the blessings we enjoyed? Our parents were always telling us we didn’t appreciate how much we had — at least in comparison with the deprivations they endured. After all, they’d struggled through the Great Depression, and had to walk ten miles to school everyday.
In the snow.
Uphill.
Both ways.
(That last part I used to tell my kids too, and they didn’t believe it any more than I did.)