Thanksgiving Homily

We hear the theme for today’s celebration in our first reading:  “Bless the God of all, who has done wondrous things on the earth!”  God, who, the author says, “fosters our growth in our mothers’ wombs” we hear that voice, calling to us across more than 2000 years, reinforcing our resolve to protect human life at all its stages, as our faith urgently calls us to do.

 

We are grateful for all the gifts God has given, and certainly this nation and its freedom and prosperity figure greatly in our thankfulness.  With those first American thanks givers over 390 years ago, we know that all of us owe our very existence, our very

lives, to our Creator God, and that all life comes from his loving care.

 

We are most grateful of all for the human gifts God has given us, the gifts he gives us in and through each other.  Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, friends, are grateful to God for

one another, grateful to God for loving each of them, in part, through one another. 

 

If we are centered in ourselves, if we automatically take for granted everything good that comes our way, and give ourselves credit for all blessings, then we will respond like those nine lepers in our gospel reading for today. If we realize that blessings come ultimately from God’s love, we will turn back, like the tenth leper – the Samaritan – and give thanks.

 

In our second reading we hear St. Paul tell us that we are all God’s chosen ones – a – startling statement for Gentiles and Jews alike who read that letter to the Colossians for the first time. Now it is up to us to recognize and implement that truth all over again in our own day, within our communities and within our Church – not one people or nation or citizenry only, but all are loved by God, and called to love and accept and support each other.

 

Thankfulness calls us to action; gratitude is not gratuitous, not cost-free.  There is a test which truly thankful people pass, and the thankless do not.  Think of crystal: if it is genuine, it rings.  We may claim that a glass is as lovely as crystal, that it shines like crystal, but if it doesn’t “ring true”, it is ordinary glass.  That is true of thankfulness.  The only “true ring” of gratitude is . . . generosity.  We are grateful if we give, if we share what God has given us--that is, everything.

 

It isn’t enough to recite a perfunctory “thanks” to God and then get right on with a life centered in self. God doesn’t want our thank-you notes, he wants our very selves, surrendered to his transforming love.  How do we do that?  St. Paul tells us: “…clothe yourselves in heartfelt mercy, with kindness, humility, meekness and patience. Bear with one another;…Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.  Over all these virtues put on love, which binds the rest together… Christ’s peace must reign in your hearts…Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.”

 

All those virtues Paul lists are relational, mercy most especially so. We are to be concerned in all seasons about those who do not have jobs, shelter, or enough to eat. On last evening’s news there was a feature item, entitled “Making a Difference.” The story took place in the Midwest. A farmer whose wife is fighting breast cancer was facing an enormous challenge harvesting his crops this year. His neighbors heard about his plight by word of mouth, and on a given day, one hundred of them showed up to harvest in a single day what would have taken the farmer a month to do on his own.  An interviewer asked one of the neighbors whether he expected some reward or recognition for what he had done. The answer: “Absolutely not!”

 

Perhaps our most common daily enemy in our effort to live the grateful, generous life is the temptation to take one another for granted...There’s a scene in Thornton Wilder’s famous play Our Town which helps me to imagine what God might often make of our treatment of each other.  It is evening in a small New England town, about 100 years ago.  A father is alone with his teenage son, to whom he says the following, very quietly and gently: “Well, George, while I was in my office today I heard a funny sound.  What do you think it was? It was your mother chopping wood.  There you see your mother – getting up early; cooking meals all day long; washing and ironing; and still she has to go out in the back yard and chop wood. I suppose she just got tired of asking you.  And you eat her meals, and put on the clothes she keeps nice for you, and you run off and play baseball – like she’s some kind of hired girl we keep around the house but don’t like very much. [Here there is a long pause.] I knew all I had to do was call your attention to it.  Here’s a handkerchief, son.”

 

Jesus has left all of us in each other’s charge in the kingdom on earth, and he tells us: “You are loved, trusted, and entrusted with one another, responsible for yourselves and each other, for the kingdom, the Church, the world around you.”  And then Jesus comes to us in the talkative people and the uncommunicative ones, in the boring, the gossipy, the angry, the lonely, the depressed, the homeless, the unreasonable.  And it is our challenge to open to them our minds, our attention, our hearts, our purses and our wallets, and our energies.

 

With Thornton Wilder’s bit of dialogue in mind, we might hear God our Father saying something like this to us worshipers here this Thanksgiving morning: “I listened recently and heard something I didn’t like to hear. I’ve seen and heard it before many times. I saw your sisters and brothers in need of you.  Some of my Son’s people went without what they needed.  Dealing with those needs was, in part, your job.  But Jesus had to find other means for them, or no means at all.  Jesus teaches you with his word, gives you his life, feeds you with his body and blood at the altar, listens to your prayers, forgives your sins.  He’s your servant and your brother, but he’s also your Redeemer, your master and your judge.”

 

God does not want our guilty feelings; instead, he wants our love in action.  So, like the father in Our Town he adds, ever so gently, “I knew I’d only have to mention it to you.” Let us prove that to be true, with our thankful, generous lives.