The importance of giving thanks

I suppose the Friday after Thanksgiving still counts as Thanksgiving. Over most of the years of my blog I have put up a post about Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving. Beginning three years ago, we began celebrating this holiday at home. Celebrating Thanksgiving at home requires me to work most of the day preparing food and cleaning up as we go. You know what? Believe or not, putting myself in the direct service of my family in these ways, along with serving at Mass and going for a long walk with my wife, have made this holiday much more enjoyable than going to someone else's house, which created the space for a certain listlessness.

Despite the fact that I believe being thankful is very important, I am often not as thankful as I should be, especially in any given moment. Thankfulness for me usually arises when I look backwards in time. Like a lot of people, I find it easier lament what I don't have. A lot of what I don't have that I think I need are just things that I want. Quite a few of these things I am better off without. Hence, even in these uneasy times (maybe especially in these uneasy times), it is good that my country, the United States of America, dedicates a day each year for giving thanks. Beyond one day, we should cultivate, to borrow a cliché, an attitude of gratitude. I don't know about you, but for me that is a tall order many days, perhaps even most days.

However, despite themselves, people seem to cotton to the opportunity to express gratitude. It seems quite natural to express thanks for people and circumstances before getting around to expressing thanks for things. As I never tire of saying, at least from a Christian standpoint, wealth and material abundance are obstacles not only to salvation but to happiness in the here and now. Like eating junk food when you are really hungry, trying to fill the existential void tha is part and parcel of being human, which parcel is made larger for many of us by living in affluent, late capitalist societies, the chasm only yawns wider.

Welsh landscape

As Christians, we first and foremost express gratitude to God. Our primary way of doing this is by participating in the Eucharist. In its original Greek, "Eucharist" refers to giving thanks. So, if you attended Mass yesterday, or otherwise celebrated the Lord's Supper with members of your local Christian assembly, you participated in the greatest feast of all, which dwarfs whatever other meal you went on to eat. You know, receiving a small, tasteless, wafer and sip of not-so-great wine highlights nicely what I was trying to communicate in the previous paragraph.

Of the several options for Gospel readings on Thanksgiving, we used the pericope from St Luke's Gospel in which Jesus heals the 10 lepers who cry out to him for mercy (see Luke 17:11-19). Of the 10, only one returned to give him thanks. The Greek word used in this verse for the English phrase "thanked hi" is euchariston (Luke 17:16). Just like in the parable related by the inspired author Luke seven chapters earlier (see Luke 10:25-37), the one healed leper who returned to thank Jesus is a Samaritan. Just as Jesus averred at the end of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, referring to the thankful Samaritan who was healed of leprosy, we can end this too by insisting "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37).

Speaking of being thankful, two days ago, the day before Thanksgiving, we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This observance is all about us sharing in the gratitude of Joachim and Anna for Our Lady, who was chosen before she was presented.

The National, with their characteristic gravity, singing "Save the Bird" from this year's Thanksgiving episode of a television show I like quite a bit - Bob's Burgers- is our Friday traditio: