We celebrate this week Thanksgiving. This is a moment to say thanks to others who have done something for us in the past year. But most especially, we should say thanks to God.

 

We might well stop and reflect on what it means to be grateful, to say thank you. We do it so routinely. But do we stop and think about how important it is to express thanks?

 

Recently, having flown to various meetings, it occurred to me that there is a sort of ritual moment at the end of each flight. Passengers take their bags and struggle through the tight passageway toward the exit. At the door, the cabin crew thanks the passengers for flying with them, and the passengers thank them for the flight (unless of course things really didn’t go well).

 

In one sense we may wonder why people say thanks at that moment? After all, the cabin crew are paid to do their tasks. And the passengers are the ones who have paid for the service. Each has given and received what is required by justice and economics. But it occurs to me that in that moment, the expression of gratitude is a recognition by both the crew and the passengers that each has a lack fulfilled by the other. 

 

The cabin crew would not long have a job and an income if people did not fly and specifically if they did not fly with their particular airline. So their thanks is not just for the purchase of the ticket. It 

is also a wider recognition of their need filled by the passengers.

 

Conversely, the passengers have gotten safely from one city to another. But airline staffs also do much more to make that trip not only possible but more human and less stressful.

 

In both cases the individuals recognize in themselves a certain lack that has been filled by another. Exchanging thanks sort of humanly completes the transaction.

 

But it is also true that words of gratitude create a certain sense of healing and strengthen the bonds between individuals. In most cases, the passengers and crew will not see each other again. The words of gratitude exchanged during the moment of deplaning means that the last moment of interaction will be characterized by the best of ourselves. In a sense we could say that the brief exchange is sealed by positive affirmation of the other by all involved.

 

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, we are celebrating a civic holiday. But our Catholic faith has long recognized the benefit of taking what is good in any culture and purifying it and raising it up to God. 

Unlike the example of the airplane ritual, our thanks to God goes only in one direction. Because God is goodness and life itself, He lacks nothing. He cannot in truth or justice thank us. But we can recognize our own needs and insufficiencies. Whether directly or through others, all of those needs are fulfilled by God. In fact, we are so often helped, strengthened, forgiven and generally made better by God that we grow insensitive to the wide range of His gifts. That alone would make Thanksgiving a worthy occasion to recognize God’s goodness.

 

But our very relation with God and our own human nature is healed and strengthened by saying thanks to Him repeatedly. In gratitude we recognize our nothingness and the goodness we gain from God’s grace. We acknowledge our total and constant dependence on God in every moment and circumstance.

 

Why not make Thanksgiving a beginning for moments of faith. Why not start this holiday season with the greatest act of thanksgiving, which is the Eucharist. Family Mass before shopping, visitors, food and football is a great segue from Thanksgiving to Advent. And all this, so that in a heartfelt way, we express in a fitting manner our thanks to God.