This weekend, many Canadians will be celebrating Thanksgiving with family and friends. For many of us, we celebrate the day with traditional foods, such as turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin pie and ice cream. Yet Thanksgiving entails much more than the food we share at our dinner tables. Thanksgiving is ultimately about expressing our gratitude to God for all that He’s given us, and for the people he’s placed in our lives!
Today, we thank God for our families and friends, the beauty of the seasons, the food on our tables, and the warmth in our homes. We thank God for the Church He left us, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, where we experience a taste of heaven, week after week. Even the struggles of faith, and the challenges we face, are reasons for us to thank God, since challenges give us opportunities to grow in our faith!
The opposite of being grateful is to be ungrateful. This happens when we spend most of our time complaining about what’s ‘not right’ in the world, while refusing to co-operate with God’s grace in be agents of positive change in the world.
A good way to be thankful is to reflect life as something precious. Time goes by more quickly with each passing year, and before we know it, we’re at the end of our lives, wondering where all the time went! With no chance to ‘get it right’ a second time, how do we spend our remaining years? How do we want our families and friends to remember us? Most importantly, in what way do we desire to encounter God when we draw our last breath? Will the Lord see our life as being well lived, full of love and thanksgiving? Or will he view our lives as a series of disjointed events, filled with a cynicism and selfish interests?
On this Thanksgiving Day, we’re called to remember that the word ‘Eucharist’ itself comes from the word ‘eucharistein’, which means ‘Thanksgiving.’ A very good word! God is love, and it’s love Himself that we are receiving at every mass! May we receive the Eucharist in ‘thanksgiving’, and get ready for good changes in our lives. Keep your eyes on the Lord, and you’ll know happiness. But don’t take my word for it. Take Christ’s Word for it! He’s the reason that we’re here today.
Fr. Pierre
