This week we celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s not a religious holiday per se, of course. 

 

Its origins go back to 1621 and the first harvest of the pilgrims in the new world. 

 

In 1863, the practice of celebrating Thanksgiving was proclaimed as a civil celebration by President Lincoln.

 

But the connection of the Thanksgiving holiday with the essence of faith is undeniable. That’s because the ultimate logic of gratitude must somehow lead us to the ultimate giver. That is God Himself.

 

To give thanks to God is a duty that is part of our nature. In heaven, in a way that, as St. Paul tells us, the heart has not imagined, we will finally see how we were made to praise God and to thank Him. That praise and thanks will not be a burden. We will see how it is the fulfillment of what we are now, even though we cannot yet understand it.

 

The Thanksgiving celebration reminds us to begin that duty toward our loving God now, in this life. The Psalms that we read and hear each Sunday at Mass are insistent on this point. “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His mercy endures forever.” (Ps 136).

 

We need to avoid, however, an approach to giving thanks to God that is too limited. It is easy, for example, to give thanks to God when something goes well or accords with our own will or plans, even though, such gratitude is a good thing. “My business has had a successful year and so I can feed the family and offer support to the Church.” “Thank you for my return to health.” “We finally were blessed with the birth of the child we have so long awaited and prayed for.” 

 

To fail to offer thanks in such moments would be to join ourselves to the nine lepers who failed to return and thank Jesus when He cured them. The rightness of thanking God in good times means, like the returning leper, we must not forget or be merely perfunctory in thanking God.

 

There is a deep spiritual good, however, in thanking God even in difficult moments of life or faith. Doing so moves us to join our will to that of our Heavenly Father, even in times of trial.

 

Consider, for example, one who is ill or suffering. Our first human reaction in such a circumstance would be to thank God only if that suffering were removed. But suffering itself can be a great and terrible gift. 

 

Perhaps the people who are ill are learning for the first time to put aside their self-sufficiency and trust God and the help of others. Or, perhaps God is giving grace to the suffering person for offering their sorrow for the reparation of their sins, thus helping to prepare them for life eternal.

 

Any moment of difficulty is also part of a wider context. That is that God has given to each of us, in happy moments or sad, the gift of life and the calling to be with Him in heaven forever. We could not suffer without first having received the gift of life itself.

 

The point is that God is always with us. God does not desire at any moment for us to be sad or depressed or unhappy. But as with Jesus on the cross, even suffering has a great and redeeming purpose.

 

On Thanksgiving Day, I hope you started by going to Mass with the whole family. Use the Mass as the moment to offer thanks to God for all that goes on in your life and in the world. 

 

Offering thanks in this way deepens our faith and our ability to find God’s hand in all things.

 

To all, a Happy Thanksgiving.