Pastoral Message – November 19, 2023
As you know, Thursday of this week is Thanksgiving Day. It’s great that we have a particular day set aside in our calendars for the purpose of thanking God for all his blessings. This brings to mind the value of having a grateful disposition.
In order for it to be true gratitude, this disposition requires that we know to whom we are grateful. Ultimately, we are grateful to God, who is the Source of all good things. Clearly, authentic gratitude will strengthen our relationship with God.
It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that gratitude is a virtue. The great St. Thomas Aquinas tells us it is related to justice, since it involves giving to another what is due to them. St. Thomas quotes the First Letter to the Thessalonians 5:18, “In all things give thanks.” When we express gratitude to God and to others who are good to us, we are growing in virtue. Although we may not think of our thanksgiving feast as a specifically holy thing, it really is.
Because gratitude involves recognizing that we have blessings in our lives, a grateful attitude gives us an inclination to be positive rather than negative in our outlook on things. This in turn gives us a greater openness to the gift of happiness. In a world where the daily news can easily turn us towards negativity, the virtue of gratitude will remind us that there is still a lot of good, and we are called to build on that goodness.
During every Mass we tell our Heavenly Father, “It is truly right and just … always and everywhere to give you thanks.” For us, Thanksgiving is more than a special day of the year. It is a reminder of what we should do every day. What a great thing it would be if we developed the habit of beginning and ending every day with an expression of gratitude to God, whose blessings fill our lives!
The word “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving” in Greek. Every Mass is a Thanksgiving Feast. As we set out to be a Eucharistic people, this means, in part, that we set out to be a thankful people. And so I thank you, my friends, for the blessing you are in my life; and I invite you to join me in thanking God for our lives, for our community, and for all the ways in which his loving providence cares for us, guides us, and blesses us.
Fr. Philip
