Speaking of Mass on Thanksgiving, while today is not one, for some reason, at my parishtoday we celebrated Mass like a solemnity. We sang the Gloria and recited the Creed.
Truth be told, I have a lot for which to be thankful. Being even more honest, I am rarely truly thankful and never as thankful as I should be. Since my fifty-ninth birthday a few weeks ago, I have been thinking back on my life. Doing this makes me thankful. Like most people, I suppose, there were some true crossroads, forks-in-the-road, and even turning points. I believe, looking back, I can see God's hand on my life, not forcing me one way or the other but guiding me to the extent I was open to His guidance.
As Søren Kierkegaard insightfully noted in his Journals and Papers: "Life must be understood backwards; but… it must be lived forwards." Nonetheless, life unrelentingly moves forward. As I get older, life seems to move forward at an accelerting pace.
The Gospel the Church's lectionary provides for Masses in observance of Thanksgiving here in the U.S., is from Saint Luke. This is especially fortuitous this year because Thanksgiving falls just a few days before the First Sunday of Advent. With the advent of the new year of grace, we move from Year B to Year C of the Sunday Lectionary. During Year C, the Gospel According to Saint Luke becomes the Gospel from which we read on Sundays.
As the late New Testament scholar, Fr. Eugene LaVerdiere, S.S.S. beautifully unfolded in his book, published in 2007, Dining in the Kingdom of God: The Origins of Eucharist according to Luke, Luke's Gospel is deeply focused on the Eucharist. It isn't focused on the celebration of the Eucharist, as such. Rather, Luke considers what it means to live eucharistically, that is, thankfully. It is no surprise that this eucharistic focus is beautifully exposited by a member of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament (this is what the "S.S.S." after his name indicates), which was founded by the "Apostle of the Eucharist," Saint Peter Julian Eymard. If you're looking for a good and accessible book on Luke's Gospel, I recommend this one very highly!
Today's Gospel today tells of Jesus healing ten lepers. As He walked through Samaria and Galilee on His way to Jerusalem, He heard these men shouting, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us." Have pity on them He did. Jesus' response was for them to go show themselves to the priests. As they went, they were cured of their leprosy. Therefore, all they needed was for a priest to declare them clean.
At the heart of this pericope is that only one of the ten came back to worship and thank Jesus. When we hear that the one who came back, a Samaritan no less, was "glorifying God in a loud voice," the word "glorifying" is a translation of the Greek word doxazon, the word at the origin of "doxology." The grateful Samaritan, cured of leprosy, worshipped Jesus by thanking him, which in the Greek original found in this passage is euchariston.
These lepers, of course, are stand-ins for you and for me. Sin is a far worse disease than leprosy. Any one of us, recognizing who Jesus is, which requires you to recognize yourself, your need, your deepest desire, couldn't help but cry out, "Jesus, have mercy on me!" In the context of the Eucharist, we do this just before receiving Holy Communion: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." Jesus doesn't just say the healing word. He is the healing Word who, in and through the Eucharist, gives Himself to you.
Our proper response to God's love is, in a word, "Eucharist." Eucharist simply means to give thanks. We give thanks to the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit for the Son and for what God accomplishes in and through Him. Given this, it isn't hard to see how fundamental gratitude is to Christian being, to being a Christian.
Far from being something we only do at Church, Eucharist, thanksgiving, is the mode of Christian life. Given that the law of prayer is the law of belief and that the law of belief is the law of life, we need to take seriously that part of every Preface to the Eucharist Prayer, addressed to the Father, that states plainly- "It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks..."
In his book, Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness, Br. David Steindl Rast urges: "Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted." Take nothing for granted. Be thankful.
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