Pope at Angelus: May Mary help us to be grateful

By Christopher Wells

In Sunday’s Gospel, the parable of the wicked tenants shows us how “ungrateful and greedy thoughts insinuated themselves into the minds of the tenants, who imagined “the product of our work belongs to us alone”.

Instead of caring for the garden and sharing the harvest with the landowner, they sought to keep everything for themselves, mistreated the master’s servants, and ultimately killed his son.

Ingratitude leads to violence

Reflecting on this parable, Pope Francis said that the tenants “should have been grateful for what they received and for how they had been treated. Instead, ingratitude gives rise to greed and a progressive sense of rebellion grew within them, leading them to see the situation in a distorted way, to feel that the owner was in their debt rather than that they were in debt to the owner who had given them work.”

And thus, the Pope said, “from being tenants, they become assassins.”

Pope Francis went on to explain that, in this parable, Jesus reminds us what happens when a person deceives him or herself into thinking he or she does things on their own and forgets to be grateful…” This attitude, he said, can lead to dissatisfaction, misunderstandings, resentment, and ultimately violence. “Yes, dear brothers and sisters,” he said, “ungratefulness generates violence... while a simple ‘Thank you’ can bring back peace!”

Learning to say 'Thank you'

The Holy Father invited us to ask ourselves if we recognize that life and faith, our very selves, and everything we have “comes from the grace of the Lord…”; and if, in response to grace, we “know how to say ‘Thank you’?”

Pope Francis concluded his Angelus reflection with the prayer that the Blessed Virgin Mary, “whose soul glorifies the Lord,” might “help us to make gratitude the light that dawns daily in our hearts.”