8. Religion Is Supreme Thankfulness or Gratitude.
8. Religion is supreme thankfulness or gratitude.8
It is striking how Aquinas understands (and does not understand) religion. He claims that “it is evident that religion is a virtue,” and of course a virtue is an inner habit in a person that empowers as one repeatedly practices it. Notice what Aquinas is not saying, however. He is not putting religion into a sociological category; he is silent about buildings and structures, institutions, rules, and lists of moral dos and don’ts. These do not constitute the essence of religion.
But what is this virtue all about that we call religion? Says Aquinas: “Religion is supreme thankfulness or gratitude.” It is essentially about the goodness and blessing we have inherited and our grateful response. It is primarily about the Via Positiva. Where does this gratitude derive from? “The debt of gratitude flows from charity” says Aquinas. A certain reverence derives from the acknowledgment of the goodness of our existence and all that makes that possible by way of the goodness of all creatures. It is religion’s task to make that reverence live. “It belongs to religion to show reverence to One God under a single aspect, namely, as the first principle of the creation and government of things.”
Notice he is not saying that religion is primarily about redemption—rather it is primarily about gratitude and reverence. Thankfulness is not coerced, and neither is true religion. “Gratitude is paid spontaneously. Thanking is less thankful when it is compelled.”
It follows that religion is primarily a matter of the heart, for “gratitude depends chiefly on the heart.” The primary purpose of the sabbath, as we are told in scripture, is to give thanks for creation. The “seventh day” described in Genesis implies that the command to “remember to keep holy the sabbath day” is about giving thanks.
But religion is not any gratitude—it is a supreme gratitude according to Aquinas. What makes it so “supreme”? Is it that we have an ultimate act of gratitude to give the Creator? Is this the bottom line for gratitude—our existence? And gratitude therefore for so many other beings that are beautiful in their own right and also necessary for our survival? Within Aquinas’s teaching about gratitude we can see the origins of Meister Eckhart’s teaching that “if the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘Thank You’ that would suffice.”
What is the opposite of gratitude? Taking something for granted. Forgetfulness. Taking and not giving back. Receiving and refusing to give or give back. Taking but not returning blessing for blessing and goodness for goodness. Aquinas actually talks about the church as “a garden,” again resisting the image of a religious institution in favor of a plot of the good earth, a source from which there flows sustenance, beauty, and nourishment.
The first and primary
meaning of salvation is this:
To preserve things
in the good.