Thanksgiving Day

Today is Thanksgiving.  Certainly here at Christ Our Hope and the Josephinum we have been planning and preparing for this day all-week long.  And yet, I wonder how thankful I could be, if this morning I woke up in a homeless shelter with no job and no idea where my next meal would come from?  I wonder how thankful I could be, if a tornado or an earthquake or a fire, in the briefest of moments wiped out my livelihood, my home, and perhaps even members of my family?  I wonder how thankful I could be, if I knew that today, thousands of miles away in a foreign land that my loved ones would be without me and I without them.  It is when we are without, that we miss most often what we so easily take for granted.

How many days since the last Thanksgiving did any of us upon getting up in the morning utter as our first spoken words: “Thank you, God.”?  I like to think of today, Thanksgiving, as a moment which clearly puts life into perspective.  On days like today, I look at my life, and I see how very fortunate I am.  And on days like today, I look at so many other lives on the street, and I see how very fortunate I am.  Let’s be thankful today for: the taxes I pay because it means that I am employed.  The clothes that fit a little too snug because it means I have more than enough to eat.  The alarm that goes off early in the morning because it means that God has given me another day of life.

So, when we sit around our Thanksgiving table later today, laden with turkey and trimmings, perhaps we may sit for a moment, with a smile on the brink of tears, knowing that we are safe and content, when so many cannot be.  And when that necessary moment passes, we should do well to ponder “how rich we are in the sight of God;” for we have hope, not fear; we have freedom, not oppression; we have opportunity, not despair.  This Thanksgiving, let us become more deeply aware that God can awaken within us a new perspective on the lives we lead.  It‘s around this Table where we are gathered as one parish family – a rich diversity of persons – yet sharing a common unity in Christ, giving thanks to God, for all that we are, and all that we have been given.