Thank God!

Some years ago, a powerful man who happened to be very religious was having some serious conversations with another powerful man who happened to be a professed atheist. Since they spoke different languages, they spoke through interpreters. In the course of their conversations, the religious man noticed that the atheist sometimes used religious expressions: at times even invoking God!

Contrary to the hopes of the religious man, the atheist was neither secretly religious nor on the edge of conversion: his native language had several idiomatic expressions of religious origin (and perhaps he and/or his translator also wanted to "mess with the mind" of the religious man).

There are a number of modern cultures in the world today, including English-speaking ones, where religious expressions are commonly used without any real religious meaning. One of the most common of these expressions is “Thank God.” Sometimes it is truly the reflex of a grateful believer, but many times it is just an expression or part of an expression that has taken root in common parlance and is used by theists and atheists alike. The most notable example perhaps is “Thank God it’s Friday” (or TGIF, for short).

In today’s first reading (Tobit 11:5-17), some very good things happen to Tobit: he is cured of blindness and his son’s new wife arrives. Tobit’s reaction is to thank God with great eloquence.

Blessed be God,
and praised be his great name,
and blessed be all his holy angels.
May his holy name be praised
throughout all the ages,
Because it was he who scourged me,
and it is he who has had mercy on me.
Behold, I now see my son Tobiah!

To be sure, this eloquence has a literary quality appropriate to the genre and may not be appreciated the same way in casual conversation today, but Tobit’s expression of gratitude should remind us that we should not only be grateful to God for the good things that happen in our lives but that we should not limit ourselves to reflexive two-word expressions of that gratitude.

We should ponder gratitude to God in our hearts, so that by his grace we may draw ever closer to him.

Likewise, we should let our expressions of gratitude to God come from the heart, so that by his grace these words of gratitude may speak to the souls of those around us.

That does not mean that we should habitually proclaim canticles in public or replace every simple “Thank God” with explicit proselytization, but rather we should always let our faith flower with gratitude in our hearts, in our minds, and in our words.