Gratitude
An act of faith by which one acknowledges that every good comes from God as a free gift and expresses the fitting gratitude to Him. It is the second aspect—“truly worthy and just, right and salutary” (Preface of the Mass)—of prayer (q.v.), the second end of the Sacrifice.
In commercial transactions, the equality of exchanged goods at their just price preserves from both parties the legal level of possession: each retains his own; material gain arises indirectly from the choice of exchanged goods; once the transaction is complete, the parties consider themselves free of any further debt (M.I. 20, 14). In the case of a gift, however, the recipient is directly and gratuitously enriched. Once the free exchange is concluded, the benefactor, as such, has a right not to a reciprocal gift (which would reduce it to a veiled commodity: Lk. 14, 12), but to the memory of his gift, to the “acknowledgment” of his benevolence, to an affection of “gratitude” from the recipient, ready to express his gratitude and to bear effective witness to it, that is, to the willingness to return to the benefactor a free homage (Tob. 12, 32-33; M.I. 25, 40; 18, 32-33).
The moral law of gratitude is chiefly incumbent upon God; and although all things are absolutely due to God (Lk. 17, 7-10), in His goodness and mercy God accepts man’s gratitude as a spontaneous offering. The sentiment of gratitude toward God thus finds vast scope in the generosity with which the faithful heart renders back to God His gifts, aiming for the highest and most perfect in divine service (1 Cor. 9, 4-27). The natural duty of gratitude is elevated to a law of grace in the evangelical dispensation (Eph. 1, 3-14), whose absolute beginning lies in God’s love for man: the first gift, in which God communicates to man not only created being but also the divine Being in supernatural grace (1 Jn. 3, 1). Love for God will therefore fundamentally be a return of the love shown in grace (ibid. 4, 19). Gratitude will give its name to Christian worship (the Eucharist), its value to humility (Rom. 5, 1-11), its fervor to penance (Lk. 7, 47), to faith its eloquence (Ps. 115, 1-10), to hope its joy (ibid. 47), to charity its abundance (Mt. 5, 43-48) in the desire to render to God an equality of love (1 Cor. 13, 12).
Far from being reserved to God alone, evangelical gratitude spreads solicitously to the free co-operators of divine munificence (Phil. 4, 10-20). Christian charity is not overcome by ingratitude, nor is it indifferent to well-ordered gratitude (Lk. 17, 15-19): this is in the disinterested nature of love, to triumph solely in the exchange of love (Rev. 5, 9-10).