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Reviewed by Kimberlee J Benart for Readers' Favorite
The Power of Gratitude: Charting a Path Toward a Joyous and Faith-Filled Life is a memoir by Patrick M. Garry written as a tribute to his parents, Michael and Elizabeth Garry. The Garrys were highly respected working-class Catholics who did their humble best to put their faith into daily action. Growing up in the Great Depression and living through WWII, the Cold War, and the socially and economically tumultuous years that followed, the Garrys led the ordinary lives of small-town Americans focused on family, faith, work, and community. With a foreword by Father Peter Brandenhoff and dotted with insightful quotations from both parents, Patrick reviews the spiritual attributes his mother’s and father’s lives exemplified and the lessons they provide about the meaning of true gratitude and deep joyfulness. “What I learned throughout my life,” Michael Garry noted, “is that success is not measured by what you have but how happy you are… But remember -- you can’t be happy if you don’t pursue happiness in the right way.”
While The Power of Gratitude by Patrick M. Garry is an utterly inspirational memoir about two people who touched the lives of so many others, it’s also a thought-provoking discussion about what it means to lead successful lives as God intended us to do. While framed within the Garry family's Catholic beliefs, its practical topics of adversity, optimism and energy, perseverance, joy, service, courage, faith, and gratitude as a social model have clear relevance to believers of any faith and non-believers as well. I particularly appreciated the discussion on the value of gratitude for a nation’s strength. “Thanksgiving should not just be a one-day holiday,” Michael advised, “it should be our national anthem.” To this, Patrick added that “Only gratitude could hold a society together, and particularly a diverse society. Ingratitude sentences a society to unending conflict, to a spiraling self-interest.” Considering the state of our country today, these are words to think about.
