GRATITUDE. – An act of faith by which one acknowledges that one has every good from God as a gratuitous gift and expresses to him the gratitude due. It is the second aspect, « truly worthy and just, equitable and salutary » (Preface of the Mass), prayer (v.), the second end of the Sacrifice.
In commercial transactions, the mercantile equality of the things exchanged at their fair price maintains on both sides the juridical level of possession: each retains what is his; the material gain derives indirectly from the choice of the things exchanged; once the transaction is completed, the parties consider themselves released from every further debt (Mt. 20, 14). In the case of a gift, however, the beneficiary is enriched directly and gratuitously. Once the free communication has been completed, the benefactor, as such, has a right not to a reciprocal gift (which would amount to veiled commerce: Lc. 14, 12), but to the remembrance of his gift, to the « recognition » of his benevolence, to an affection of « gratitude » on the part of the recipient, ready to express his r. and to bear effective witness to his gratitude, that is, to his willingness to repay the benefactor with a gratuitous act of homage (Tob. 12, 32-33; Mt. 25, 40; 18, 32-33).
The moral law of gratitude was imposed chiefly with regard to God; and although everything is absolutely owed to God (Lc. 17, 7-10), in his goodness and clemency God accepts man’s gratitude as a spontaneous offering. The feeling of gratitude toward God thus finds an immense field in the generosity with which the faithful heart returns his gifts to God, striving for the greatest and most perfect service of the divine (I Cor. 9, 4-27). The natural duty of gratitude is raised to a law of grace in the evangelical economy (Eph. 1, 3-14), whose absolute beginning lies in God’s charity toward man: the first gift, in which God communicates to man not only created being, but also divine Being in supernatural Grace (I Io. 3, 1). Charity toward God will therefore fundamentally be a return of the love shown in Grace (ibid. 4, 19). The r. will give its name to Christian worship (Eucharist), its value to humility (Rom. 5, 1-11), its ardor to penance (Lc. 7, 47), its eloquence to faith (Ps. 115, 1-10), its jubilation to hope (ibid. 47), and its abundance to charity (Mt. 5, 43-48) in the longing to render to God an equality of love (I Cor. 13, 12).
Far from reserving itself for God alone, evangelical gratitude spreads solicitously toward the free cooperators in the divine munificence (Phil. 4, 10-20). Christian charity does not allow itself to be overcome by ingratitude, but neither does it remain insensitive to rightly ordered gratitude (Lc. 17, 15-19): for it belongs to the disinterested nature of love to triumph solely in the exchange of love (Apoc. 5, 9-10).