November 24, 2022 Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day 2022          

The Attitude of True Gratitude

Msgr Thomas Gervasio

A man bought a parrot, only to have it constantly insult him. He tried everything to make the parrot stop but nothing worked. In an act of great frustration, he punished the parrot by putting it in the freezer. After a few minutes, the insults stopped. He thought, “Oh, no! I must have killed the parrot.” When he opened the freezer, he found the parrot shivering and it stammered, “No more insults! Forgive me!” After a moment, the parrot asked, “I was just wondering, what exactly did the turkey do?”

Today it is easy to think of enjoying turkey and all the trimmings, easy to think of the matches between the Giants and the Cowboys or between the Patriots and Vikings, but we know that the focus of this day is gratitude.

On a purely human level, we appreciate the importance of giving thanks. It is one of the first things we learn as children. How often upon receiving a gift, a child will hear their parents say, “What do you say?” or “Did you write your thank you notes?” It is a virtue we strive to cultivate in our human relationships.

In our relationship to God, gratitude is even more fundamental. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that it is the first duty of the creature to the Creator. Every Mass calls this to mind: “It is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord.” Not every now and then, but always. Today we consider the question of St. Paul: “What do you have that you did not receive?”

Today we offer our thanks to God for the bountiful gifts and freedoms we enjoy as a nation while imploring God to help us respect and preserve them.

Today we also offer thanks for the personal blessings we have received—those that are always before our eyes and for those that are hidden from our sight. This is easy when life is going well but not so easy when we feel that our troubles outweigh our blessings. Giving thanks to God “always and everywhere” may seem a challenge and even a struggle.

But true spiritual gratitude embraces the entirety of our lives, the good and the bad, its joys and sorrows. The challenge in being a truly grateful person is to see in the pains and struggles of the past the pruning work of God, purifying my heart, strengthening me, helping me reorder my priorities allowing new and more abundant growth to take place, providing me with an opportunity to walk with the Lord. A Greek Orthodox monk wrote: “If we have a constant feeling of gratitude toward God, then every single thing we encounter is a gift from him (even if it comes in a dirty, ugly box) which has the potential to deepen our communion with Him and the true understanding of ourselves. On this Thanksgiving Day, let us pray:

Thank you, Lord, for EVERYTHING!
May I trace all my blessings back to YOU!
Thank you for the gifts you have bestowed upon our nation.
May we be responsible stewards of its gifts and freedoms.
Help us continue to be a generous people
       using the gifts we have received in service of others!
 Lord, help me to be grateful for my entire life,
       for the gift of faith and your holy sacraments.
       for life’s lights and shadows,
       for its joys and sorrows,
       for its gains and losses,
Enlighten my mind that I may know
       that you are always at work in the whole of my life.
Open my eyes that that I can see in every event of life,
       Your loving and guiding hand!