"God help us to be grateful for our blessings, never to be guilty of the sin of ingratitude, and to instill this same attitude in the lives of our children. Someone has said that an ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating apples and never looking up to see where they come from." − Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994)

The harvest festival known as "thanksgiving day" was first celebrated on Sept. 8th, 1565 in what would become St. Augustine, Florida; but the traditional "first Thanksgiving" is associated with Plymouth Plantation in 1621.

The Thanksgiving Day holiday has become a day for family and friends to gather together, to overindulge in food and drink and in this manner, to express our thanks for bounty. I am reminded of the ancient Jewish festival of Sukkoth, which was celebrated in the Temple at Jerusalem with a wasteful use of water. As the high priest chanted prayers of thanksgiving for God's gift of rain in the year past, priests and Levites and acolytes would form a long procession from the pools of Bethzatha (Hebrew: "bubbling over place") on the hillside of Mt. Zion - filling huge copper bowls with the precious water - fed into the pool by underground springs. Handing the bowls from one person to another along the procession line, the water was finally poured out over the altar to spill and run over the sides of the altar, over the floor of the Israelite court, through the Court of the Gentiles, down the Mt. Zion steps and back to a dry and thirsty desert. Such a provocative liturgy: to thank God for the precious gift of water, here on the edge of the relentless desert; by wasting it. Trusting that God will always send more water for the crops to sustain his people, they acted in what may appear to be an irresponsible and frivolous way. For the Israelites, God can be trusted to bring more rain. For us, we eat ourselves into a comatose stupor, trusting that Vons and Ralphs will always have more.

As an analogy, if this sounds like a bit of a stretch, it is. You see, I'm not so convinced that when we gather for our Thanksgiving Day celebrations that we actually spend much time giving thanks for the harvest or for much of anything else for that matter. We, as a culture, are so starved for time away from labor and work, that − like other national holidays − it has become a time to play, to be with loved ones and enjoy the game on our hi-def t.v.'s and then take a nap.

So, as we approach another Thanksgiving Day, maybe we should take a moment to consider the place of gratitude in our lives.

Ignatius − as well as other Christian writers − worried about whether "ingratitude" was in and of itself a kind of sin (alongside lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride perhaps?) or should it be considered to be a source (or cause) of sinfulness.

I am convinced that an ungrateful heart is an occasion for sin.

When we are in a place of ungratefulness, we often find ourselves in a darkness of bitterness and resentment, which creates a climate of alienation − alienation from ourselves in whom we are disappointed, alienation from others who let us down and from God, who should have blessed us more fully. Such alienation and isolation makes us less likely to care about how our behavior affects others and so we engage in self destructive behavior, hurt others and ultimately, wound the heart of God.

"Man's ingratitude towards God is the other point which our minds find difficult to grasp. We know, alas, that we frequently sin and that by sinning we rebel against God's will and abuse His loving gifts. However, we find it hard to realize that sin is an act of ingratitude against God, still more, that God should be displeased with it, and feel something similar to what we feel when we are betrayed by a friend…We thought God had no heart, that He would not feel man's ingratitude, while in reality He feels it infinitely more than anything He felt in His Passion." − from Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius by Aloysius Ambrizzi.

Conversely, when we take the time to count our blessings − to be grateful − we find ourselves in a place of a blessed connectedness: at peace with ourselves and with others and at harmony with God. Gratitude produces, as a byproduct, humility. And the practice of the art of humility and thankfulness leads to a change of character − to holiness of life.

The most powerful example of this reality is St. Francis of Assisi, who unstintedly gave thanks, even though his life was marred by numerous infirmities, including pain in his feet so that he could hardly walk and eyesight so poor he was accounted as effectively blind, and not the least of which was the wounds of the stigmata, which would not heal. Yet with all of this, Francis constantly celebrated the goodness of God and His creation. Once, he gave sage advice to the birds of the air:

"…he (God) hath dealt so bounteously with you; and therefore beware, little sisters mine, of the sin of ingratitude, but ever strive to please God." − The Little Flowers of St. Francis.

To cultivate a grateful heart means only accepting the discipline of giving thanks; of stopping daily to offer words of praise to God for the blessings: