Thanksgiving Day 2013

One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from a Dominican priest, Meister Eckhart:

"IF THE ONLY PRAYER YOU EVER SAY IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE IS THANK YOU, THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH."

Indeed, gratitude is our first and best response to God.

Saint Paul begins his Letter to the Corinthians as he begins so many of his letters with gratitude: “Brothers and sisters: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always on your account for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ Jesus.

In today’s Gospel, the ten lepers are the gracious recipients of the unconditional and unending love of God. We are all God’s beloved sons and daughters. In the Gospel account, God is relentlessly pursuing us with unending and unconditional love, and the account tells us that we sometimes are relentlessly running away from the mystery of God’s love.

What brings us together as Americans and as a people of faith is our prayer of gratitude.

While this holiday is a national holiday, a civic celebration, an American Turkey day, a family day for football and a turkey feast, this day is an immensely spiritual day as well. Thanksgiving is the most spiritual of all our national holidays.

On this the fourth Thursday of the month of November, we celebrate this wonderful national holiday to give thanks to God for the blessings we enjoy as a nation. We recall the first Thanksgiving, a harvest feast in a Plymouth plantation in the year 1621. Our beginnings as a nation were marked by simplicity and gratitude. May we not forget those defining values of simplicity and gratitude mark who we are as an American people.

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday that expresses very well the spiritual roots of our nation. We are at our best as Americans when we are grateful to God, grateful to one another, and grateful for the blessings we enjoy as a nation. We are at our best as a nation not by the force of our military might, but when in humility we give thanks for the incredible blessings we enjoy.

For us as Catholic Christians, the first Thursday took place on another Thursday, approximately 2000 years ago, Holy Thursday, in a rented room in Jerusalem where Jesus gathered with his apostles at the Last Supper and celebrated the Eucharist for the first time.

I think it can be said with considerable truth that our lives are directed by the stories we choose to dwell on. On this Thanksgiving Day, what family stories, what stories of our parish family, and what national stories do we remember and celebrate as a nation?

In my own family stories, I am immensely grateful for the privilege of baptizing my 28^th grand nephew/niece – Keara Grace Lewis. In holding Keara Grace in my arms, I desire that she will always richly share in the mystery of God’s love. I am conscious that I baptized her mom and witnessed her parents celebrate the Sacrament of Marriage. Additonally, I presided over the wedding of Keara’s grandparents – my sister and brother-in-law. My heart is filled with gratitude for the incredible blessings of my famiy life.

In our parish family, I am very much touched by our generosity in our second collection for the people of the Philippines whose lives are devastated by the typhoon Hayan. The collection today is to be used for a fund for the needy families in our community during this holiday season. I am inspired by the moms and dads of our parish community as they come together to prepare their child for the Sacrament of First Reconciliation. We together seek to pass to our youth the healing love of our gracious God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

We as a nation are at our very best when we remember the hungry in our midst and when we reach out and share from our abundance to share with the poor in our midst. We are grateful for this great nation founded on a vision of peace and justice for all people. We ask for the grace to be faithful to our founding vision as a nation.

On this Thanksgiving morning, may we as a faith community ask for the grace that our community life will always be marked by a radical gratitude to our loving God. May we be mindful that Jesus is the great teacher of gratitude – grateful for the love of His heavenly Father, and He showed that gratitude in his living and dying witnessing to the Father’s love.