Inside the Core: A Time for Gratitude

Inside the Core this week, I want to focus on the word gratitude. I feel very grateful for many things as we approach the end of the semester and the holy season of Christmas and other important religious holidays. I want to mention first our wonderful faculty, who teach in the Core year in and year out with dedication and even passionate commitment. Recently, a faculty member shared a note written to her by a student, expressing enormous gratitude for the class and what it meant to her. Over the years I have read many such expressions of gratitude from students about Core classes and the faculty who teach them.

I am grateful also for the students themselves. Recently I have heard from two faculty in the Core who have taught for us for some time expressing what an honor it is to teach our students in the Core. This semester I am teaching Core III: Engaging the World (Fantasy and Faith: Tolkien and Lewis and their Precursors), and I have thoroughly enjoyed the insights and enthusiasm of the students. Again and again, I hear from faculty what a joy it is to teach our students.

I am grateful for my colleagues in university administration, particularly in Academic Affairs, and faculty in the departments with which I am affiliated – the Core, English, and Catholic Studies. It is a true blessing to work with such dedicated people. Especially, I want to mention our coordinators for the Core – Elizabeth Redwine (Core I), Todd Stockdale and Erin Zoutendam (Core II), Deb Zinicola and Mary Balkun (Core III), and SCCC co-chairs (Angela Weisl and Mary Balkun).

Finally, I am deeply grateful for the Sant’ Egidio prayer community, which has been meeting regularly on Thursday afternoons since 2016. This group of people (faculty, administrators, priests, and others) has become like a family, and it is a joy to share in prayer with them, including prayer for students and other co-workers here at Seton Hall.

In an article by David Mills, he connects gratitude to the conversions of both Dorothy Day and G. K. Chesterton. He mentions that Dorothy Day, one of our modern authors in Core I, credited gratitude over the birth of her daughter, Tamar, as crucial to her conversion. In The Long Loneliness, she says: “The final object of this love and gratitude was God. No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child. With this came the need to worship, to adore.” Similarly, Chesterton spoke “Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets…Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?” (National Catholic Register, June 11, 2025). 

Gratitude is extremely important at this time of year.  Christmas especially brings to light gratitude for the gift of the Holy Child, whose family were not able to find a home for them as they travelled to Bethlehem.  The poverty and humility of the Holy Family, accented in every creche we see (a tradition begun by St. Francis in 1223), inspires gratitude for this profound gift of Love and impels us to be more outward-looking for those in similar plights in today’s world. This season we might all cultivate gratitude for the many blessings we have when we clearly see how so much of the world is suffering increasing lack, along with inequality and violence.  Perhaps the best Christmas (or Chanukah or other holiday) gift we can give is to share some of what we have with those who have not (especially, migrants, addicts, the homeless, and others on the margins of society).  I will close with Mary’s beautiful prayer of gratitude, her famous Magnificat, found in the 1st chapter of Luke’s Gospel, a text in Core I: 

The Canticle of Mary

And Mary said:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
` For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant;
henceforth all generations will call me blessed.
The Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is shown from age to age
to those who fear him.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has routed those who are arrogant in the desires of their hearts.
He has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of Israel his servant,
ever mindful of his merciful love,
according to the promises he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever (Luke 1: 46-55).

Categories: Faith and Service