This Morning: Chesterton, Thanksgiving, and Aquinas

Just a reminder that Matt Swaim and I will discuss G.K. Chesterton and Gratitude on the Son Rise Morning Show at 6:45 a.m. Central/7:45 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here on the Sacred Heart Radio website; the segment will be repeated on November 26 during the special Thanksgiving Day episode, while the hosts and staff at Sacred Heart Radio enjoy their Chestertonian Thanksgiving feasts!

As I read and contemplated Chesterton's 1903 essay on "The Philosophy of Gratitude" I thought that his parable of "God in the Dock" was an indirect answer to Ivan Karamazov's desire to return his "ticket" to God because of all the human cruelty and evil in the world. Unlike Aloysha, who is mute before his brother's examples of innocent children suffering, Chesterton would have reminded Ivan that there are also good families and people who rescue children. Ivan should have some feelings "about the normal"; some "gratitude for the positive miracles of life". Like the human judge in Chesterton's "Cosmos at the bar" parable, Ivan should be careful about whom and how he judges.

(BTW: I don't know if Chesterton ever read The Brothers Karamazov, but he did know something about Dostoevsky, as this quotation proves.)

Chesterton intuitively grasped--before he wrote about "The Dumb Ox"--St. Thomas Aquinas's reasoning that thanksgiving is, as Cicero stated, a special part of the Cardinal virtue of Justice. As we say in the dialogue before the Preface at Mass: "It is right and just" that we "give thanks to the Lord our God". Aquinas comments in question 106, Section 1 of The Summa Theologiæ:

Accordingly, since what we owe God, or our father, or a person excelling in dignity, is not the same as what we owe a benefactor from whom we have received some particular favor, it follows that after religion, whereby we pay God due worship, and piety, whereby we worship our parents, and observance, whereby we worship persons excelling in dignity, there is thankfulness or gratitude, whereby we give thanks to our benefactors. And it is distinct from the foregoing virtues, just as each of these is distinct from the one that precedes, as falling short thereof.

And Chesterton obviously agreed with Aquinas's reasoning in Article 3, that we owe thanks to every benefactor--even the man who passes the mustard--because "it is right and just":

Every effect turns naturally to its cause; wherefore Dionysius says (Div. Nom. i) that "God turns all things to Himself because He is the cause of all": for the effect must needs always be directed to the end of the agent. Now it is evident that a benefactor, as such, is cause of the beneficiary. Hence the natural order requires that he who has received a favor should, by repaying the favor, turn to his benefactor according to the mode of each. And, as stated above with regard to a father (II-II:31:3; II-II:101:2), a man owes his benefactor, as such, honor and reverence, since the latter stands to him in the relation of principle; but accidentally he owes him assistance or support, if he need it.

There's a hierarchy of benefactors from the man who passes the mustard, to our parents, to Almighty God, and some friends and family in between. Chesterton agrees that it is right and just that we express our gratitude appropriately, from a polite "Thank you for passing the mustard," to a heart-felt "Thank you for loving me from my birth in this family until this day", to a worshipful, sacrificial "Thank you for creating me, redeeming me, forgiving me, and blessing me." 

It is right and just. Amen.