Today is Thanksgiving Day, and when I think of, I don't know about you, but when I think
of Thanksgiving, I think of the gobbling turkeys, the big feasts and family gatherings, going,
traveling to our family and having a feast, or mingling with relatives and watching football
or whatever, playing football or whatever.
These family things, we think of Thanksgiving.
But, of course, the original intention was a day to give thanks to God.
The pilgrims wanted to give thanks to God for all their blessings, bringing them to a new country
where they're free to practice their religion and other things.
So a day of thanksgiving to God, and so, of course, is a very religious day, a religious event,
which, of course, has become, as so many other things, religion gets sort of swept
under the carpet, and we replace it with secular things, like Christmas so many times.
But we come back to the, certainly the church has sanctified this day here in America,
where we celebrate Thanksgiving, sanctified it, and made a mass out of it, special mass options for today.
And it is.
A day for us to reflect, because Thanksgiving is a major aspect of our Christian life,
a major aspect of our spiritual life, because when we pray,
Thanksgiving is one of the four major ways to pray, adoration, thanksgiving, petition,
and reparation, or sorrow for our sins, asking for forgiveness.
So Thanksgiving is...
very important, and it's, and when we exercise it, when we practice Thanksgiving,
it's such a beautiful way to pray, to say thank you to God for so many blessings, for everything,
because we are naked before God, we are nothing.
Everything we have is from God, so we thank him for our very life, our mind that we can think,
and our feet and hands that we can walk and do things.
And our very body, these basic things we need to thank God for.
We need to thank him for our family, for our Catholic faith,
which gives us such consolation and purpose and meaning in life,
for our vocation in religious life, for married life, for our family, our job,
all these things we have to thank him for on a daily basis, have that spirit of thanksgiving to God.
This is our obligation to God, who is so good.
He is so good to us, and we should thank him, too, for our crosses and difficulties
that really build a good character in us and teach us to, teach us many things
and help us not to be selfish and help us to be thankful for the health that we do have,
the prosperity that we do get, but also for the merits that we gain for eternal life
and the promises that God gives to us.
Everything.
We should be thankful to God for the good and the bad and the prayers answered
and all the many blessings that we have every day.
We should dedicate ourselves to thankfulness, and we can do that with the spirit of humility.
If we're not humble, we're not aware of our nakedness and our nothingness
and our sinfulness even more.
If we're not aware of that keenly,
keenly aware from the depths of our being, then we're not going to be very thankful.
And if we're not thankful, we're not going to love very much.
We're not going to love God and say thank you.
You know, thanks and love go together.
They go hand in hand.
When we thank God, we, our hearts well up with love for God.
And we say, thank you.
I love you, God.
And give, you know, may I always be appreciative.
And the more thankful, the more we love God.
The more we appreciate.
And then the more God gives to us, the more grace, more blessings God gives to us.
They do really go hand in hand, and they feed each other love and thanks.
And at the base of it is our humility, our dependency,
the spirit of our understanding and awareness of our dependency on God.
You can see that in the poor and those who suffer and those who help the suffering.
They're so thankful, deeply thankful.
And the poor are so.
They're so thankful when they're given things.
And those who are sad and people treat them kindly, they're so thankful because they didn't have it.
And so we need to be always conscious and recalling our nothingness and our dependency on God for everything
and not get caught up in self-sufficiency and the things that we have and the talents that we have
and get caught up in that and say, I don't need to say thanks.
I have it.
And so, you know, as the Pharisees did, they, you know, they prided themselves in what they had.
And the Pharisee and the publican, the publican saw his nothingness and sinfulness.
And he wouldn't even look up to God.
He just said, Lord, have mercy on me.
And the Pharisee would say, you know, I would pride himself in the things that he does.
And, you know, and he didn't please God.
So it's so important to be thankful.
And this is a reminder today to be very thankful and just to use this form of prayer
to really nourish our spiritual life, to make it grow and be full of life and full of joy
and full of love for God, full of thankfulness.
And let us not forget, forget.
We don't recall all the good things that God gives.
To us, we're not thankful then either.
So we have part of thankfulness is a virtue.
We make that effort to think about all the things that God does for us.
And if we don't recall, we don't think, we're too forgetful,
then we become unappreciative, ungrateful, and we offend God in that way.
Just like these nine Samaritans who, or maybe these ten lepers,
nine of them sort of forgot that Jesus was their benefactor.
They just went off to the priests.
And I'm sure they were probably a little bit thankful, but not enough.
Not enough to go back to Jesus and say thank you and fall on their face like this one Samaritan did.
He remembered and he went back and said thank you.
We have to do that.
We have to remember all the good things other people do for us.
Remember that we are nothing.
That we are sinners.
That we have offended God so many times and he's so good to us nevertheless.
And he continues to show mercy to us.
And we should thank God with hearts full of thankfulness after confession that he's forgiven us.
The sacrament of thanksgiving too.
We walk away full of thanks and love for God for his mercy to us.
We see that in St. Mary Magdalene.
Her immense thankfulness at the feet of Jesus, washing his feet.
With her tears and her hair and her, you know, imagine what she felt after Jesus said her many sins are forgiven because she has loved much.
She probably would have broken down in greater tears, greater thankfulness and greater love for our Lord.
And that's what we should do after confession and every day of our life.
So let us ask our lady to help us to be thankful.
To be thankful.
And to continue to nourish our faith, nourish our love for God in thankfulness.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.