Marching Together with the Attitude of Gratitude
Life, for a corporate organization, is marching with ambition towards its achievements; life, for an institution, is going ahead with vision towards realizing the mission in concrete; and life, for a person of other-centered, is accompanying the needy towards perfection and fulness. Now, who is the person to tell us about life? Who else would share the best with us other than those who die? In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware mentions the first three as the regret of the dying people:
- I wish that I’d let myself be happier;
- I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends; and
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Today we are running after material abundance, rather than looking for richness and abundance of true, loving, and lasting friendship.
We are living in a world and perhaps we are part of the mad rush towards wealth rather than healthy relationships. We are living, according to Anand Teltumbde in his book Republic of Caste, in a world of social Darwinism. Social Darwinism believes and promotes ‘survival of the fittest’ in the society, justifying imperialism, racism, social inequality, and fundamentalism. And P.N. Krishnan, in his book on ‘A Crusade for Social Justice’ sees the world of the elite who enjoy Property – Position – and Power at one social extreme, against the poor of Illiteracy – Insignificance – Untouchability at the other extreme. Now, who is to build the bridge between the two worlds of the Haves and the Have-Nots? How do you build a bridge of understanding and relationships between these two worlds of Plenty and Nothing? The same bricks and mortar are used to build walls and bridges – But the difference is: The wall divides the people based on social status, while the bridge connects people in relationships.
This inequality at times pricks the conscience of people, often taking the form of social storm. When the common people realized that they were excluded from political power and position, they resented the prevalent inequality and injustice and the result was the French revolution. And in 1960s the world witnessed wide spread students unrest mainly to get more freedom and they wanted their demands to be heeded. Outwardly it might look like economic inequality as the cause. According to Daniel Dorling (Injustice – Why social inequality persists), today’s corporate and political mantra seems to have five faces:
- Elitism is efficient (for economic and political monopoly);
- Exclusion is necessary (for social stratification);
- Prejudice is natural (bringing in social and religious fundamentalism);
- Greed is good (to swindle the poor); and
- Despair is inevitable (in the process of swindling the poor) (In: S.J. Stanley, The Ignatian CEO, 2018 , pp.198-202).
It is a world of swim or sink. The real cause is lack of meaningful relationships among all strata or social rungs of the economic ladder. And today we are invited for radical thinking seeking roots in our principles and branching into empowering actions. We need to take our stand with the needy and the marginalized. We are expected to take our lot with the lost, the least, and the last in the society in order to march with them.
It is here that the Lord comes to enlighten us. He assures us of His ever presence with us always: Through the words of Isaiah, Yahweh informs us that He created us and shaped us and hence He owns us – He will not let us be kidnapped by others, for he will redeem us with ransom. He is very possessive of us. He would save us from raging waters and destructive fire, for He loves us, loves us for all times. As we are his possession he would not trade us with anything or anybody (Is 43:1-4). This is, of course, addressed to the poor in the society who are considered as worthless. As we see, Yahweh took His stand with the slaves in Egypt and brought them out with in liberty and made them a great nation. He led them out of Egypt with raised hand and outstretched arms (Deut 26:8 and Jer 32:21). His outstretched arms protected them from any calamities or disasters, while his raised hand smashed any people or force that rose against his chosen people. And all He wanted of them was to walk with Him with gratitude as He led them and fed them in the desert for forty years till they occupied and prospered in their promised land.
This gratitude is concretely expressed through an event in the life of Jesus. On His way to Jerusalem, at the border of Galilee and Samaria, ten men with leprosy cry out for help. The border of Galilee and Samaria is a no-man’s territory – The Samaritans were the untouchables for the Jews and the border is the last chance for the Samaritans to seek and meet Jesus and others could also meet Jesus – It is symbolic that at the border Jesus is ready to meet nine socially dominant Jews along with a single socially suppressed Samaritan – all affected by leprosy. The Lord always listens to the cry of the helpless. But then, only the single Samaritan, out of ten, comes back to thank him. The other nine Jews take Jesus for granted – After all, He heals so many why not He does it for us, seems to be their arrogant attitude. But the poor Samaritan knows the value of his healing from leprosy. And they are filled with the attitude of gratitude. The poorer you are, the more grateful you prove to be towards those who help us.
Jesus often brings in the Samaritans as model to others: Today’s Samaritan is the embodiment of gratitude. The Good Samaritan is the model for empathy who was ready to save an unknown person on his way down from Jerusalem (Lk 10:30-37). It was the Samaritan Woman at the well of Jacob to whom Jesus, for the first time, reveals that he is the Messiah (Jn 4:26).
Samaritans in the New Testament stand out as the hope from the history of neglected and hated people. They were looked down and derided by the Jews because they established their own center of worship on Mount Gerizim (as opposed to the Mount Zion of the Jews); and they developed their own version of the first five books of the Bible (Torah) ascribed to Moses and rejected the writings of the prophets and other Jewish traditions. The Samaritans were despised by the Jews – For the Jews, the Samaritans were only entities, not human beings with equal social status. But Jesus preferred such people as He said, it is the sick who need the doctor (Mk 2:17). It is the suppressed who need the liberating leader. And it is the poor who need our service. Jon Sobrino, South American Liberation Theologian, would say that the poor chose Christianity before Christianity chose the poor. If you look at the history of Christianity in any country, it would be the poor who first embraced the Church and even today if you scan the majority of the Church, it would be poor. 14% of the Anglicans are poor; 19% of the Catholic Church comprises the poor; and 18% of the non-denominational Christians are poor. But over the centuries Christianity has failed to empower the poor. Hence, we are invited as well as challenged whether we could consider it our privilege to work for the suppressed and liberate them. In Tamilnadu, nearly 70% of the Catholic church consists of the Dalits. But the one Catholic Church, in many places, have two different cemeteries to bury the dead and even the hearse used to take along the dead bodies would be different. Does it imply that there would be a Dalit heaven and a non-Dalit heaven? And which side of the fence do we stand today?
Keeping this in mind, the Jesuits have evolved as one of their four Universal Apostolic Preferences or the roadmap for the next ten years (2019-2029). i. Marching with the marginalized; and ii. leading the youth towards hope-filled future as two of the targets in the roadmap. Today, you, as youth leaders, are invited to serve the poor. You have to make the choice: Is your leadership going to reflect the corporate or political leadership that is prevalent in the world or servant leadership that is needed today? In other words, is your leadership going to be transactional leadership or transformational leadership? The Church and the society needs you as the transformational leaders. Remember the disciples who were going to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35), literally breaking away from the band of Jesus since they were disillusioned and disappointed by the death of Jesus as a criminal on the cross. But they recognized him in breaking of the bread and Jesus transformed them in breaking of the bread. The disciples of Emmaus left Jerusalem as disgruntled men but when they recognized Jesus they rushed back, even in the middle of the night, as men of gratitude to Jerusalem. Jesus who broke himself into pieces on the cross is inviting and challenging each one us to break ourselves in our services to transform the poor. We need to respond to this invitation in our life and work.
We are invited to live empty and die empty. In his book Die Empty, Todd Henry, says: “The most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. In the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, never-launched businesses, unreconciled relationships, and all of the other things that people thought, ‘I’ll get around to that tomorrow.’ One day, however, their tomorrows ran out”. Instead, let us empty ourselves in the service of people. We could say, “I have emptied myself of whatever creativity is lingering inside, with minimal regrets about how I spent my focus, time, and energy.”
From our satisfaction of serving the needy, the gratitude of the people we serve would emerge. Gratitude has two dimensions: vertical and horizontal. God has been so good to us and He has given us a little bit of that goodness to share with others – So, we are grateful to the Transcendent. As God walks with us, we are inspired to walk with our fellow human beings. And we are moved to extend our helping hands to the untouchable and the unreachable; and they are grateful to us for our service. This horizontal gratitude is mutual. Not only we give them our service but we also receive their blessings and well wishes. This is receiving in giving – So we are grateful to the needy for giving us an opportunity to help them as we are thankful to God for choosing us to do His mission of serving the poor. The world of social Darwinism believes in the survival of the elite and the fittest, but our Principle and Foundation of is to toil with the poor and the marginalized since we believe that the best is at the bottom of the social pyramid.
AICUF has all along been trying to emerge as a social leveller. AICUF holds the dictum: I am born in an unjust society, but I would not leave the society as I find it. Yes, we need to make this earth and the society a better place to live for others where fraternity, liberty, and equality reigns. And we shall all march together being grateful to each other. We shall echo the words of Martin Luther King that we shall create a society where people would not be judged by their colour of skin or social caste or economic status but by the content of their character.
And the agents of this transforming change are you and the time is now. Let us begin the march with the marginalized with gratitude to God who has given us the heart to serve; and with gratitude to our marginalized who find fullness of life in our service. With this determination let AICUF step into the next century. Let us now and then pause, in our marching for and with the marginalized, and ask ourselves the three Ignatian soul searching questions:
- What have I done in the past for the needy?;
- What am I doing at present for the marginalized?; and
- What should I do in the future for the suppressed and the discriminated?
Let the Lord who began this great work in us bring it to fruition. Let us march, march with the migrants and the marginalized, and march with gratitude and hope.