Why Do We Give Thanks

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To give thanks, always!

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What Reasons Do We Have for GIVING THANKS?

 

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“Giving Thanks” Challenges Us All

 

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Gratitude in the time of pandemic

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Receive, Give Thanks, Give…

Thanksgiving is a holiday that is celebrated around the world, in places as diverse as Canada, the Caribbean, and Liberia. As a national holiday in the United States, it is celebrated annually on the fourth Thursday of November.

The historical origins of this holiday involve "giving thanks" to the Divine for a bountiful harvest and the blessings of the year that is ending. The holiday’s origins also include English traditions dating back to the Protestant Reformation that emerged as a reaction to the large number of religious holidays in the Catholic calendar.

In the United States, the Thanksgiving tradition dates back to 1621, to Plymouth in today’s state of Massachusetts, where members of the Wampanoag tribe helped 102 pilgrim colonists by giving them seeds and teaching them how to fish. Over time, this celebration has become one of our most anticipated and joyous holidays.

Historical evidence suggests that, in other present-day American places like Texas, Virginia, and Florida, similar ceremonies of "thanksgiving" were celebrated, some by Spanish explorers, even before that first Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621.

The common thread, of course, is gratitude – the emotion that is aroused when we recognize and appreciate in everything that is, in everything we have, and in everything that surrounds us, the goodness of life. Gratitude is the recognition and appreciation of all that is given by and received from a loving and transcendent presence that we call God, or from those who are dearest and closest to us, or from so many who anonymously contribute to the greater good.

For this reason, we can say that gratitude is an essential, original, and spontaneous emotion, corresponding to the grace and benevolence of God and of life; it is gratitude that encourages and gives us strength to continue living, trusting, loving, and sharing.

Gratitude is an emotion inherent in human nature that produces in us the joy of living, waiting, and sharing "without cost, what we have received without cost" (Mt 10:7-15).

THANKSGIVING DAY is, therefore, a deeply human celebration that gives us the opportunity – together with those most beloved to us – to acknowledge how much we have to be thankful for and how much we can give on a personal, family, social, and national level.

The historical achievements of this Nation, earned through the labor and perseverance of its inhabitants, have made the United States the most prosperous country on earth. Today, we enjoy a very good quality of life compared to many other countries. This opportunity for prosperity has made the United States a safe haven, a beacon of light or land of promise to which so many men and women came and continue to arrive in search of a better life and who, with their cultural wealth and labor, enhance the present and future of this Nation.

The greatness of this Nation depends on, and will always depend on, our common purpose to care for and give thanks for the inheritance that we received from those who preceded us on this soil; while we must work to create the legacy we will leave to future generations, hoping that those who are born here and those who come here will continue to find reasons to give thanks, to love, to share, and to wait... Our greatness today compels us to care for our values, nature, institutions, and the current social infrastructure so that future generations may also experience gratitude.

Recognizing that we have so much to give thanks for, we are compelled - at the same time - to give, to share, to serve, to be supportive so that those most in need in our society and in the world have the opportunity to give thanks. Thus, gratitude becomes a permanent celebration and, above all, an everyday, common, and national attitude.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The Joy of Gratitude

Gratitude is an anthropological posture; that is, a possibility that every human being has once he is able to recognize all the good that is in himself and in all that surrounds him.

It is possible for humans, even with positive experiences in life, to go through life without giving a lot of thought, or perhaps recognizing the good as personal merit or conquest through their own efforts. Or they can recognize a gracious and kind presence that brings good into human existence.

Societies and their correspondent cultures can, of themselves, promote a disposition in their citizens toward gratitude or they can ignore the issue.

In this transition from modernity to postmodernity, our culture is not well disposed or committed to gratitude nor willing to promote in other persons a readiness to be thankful. On the contrary, our culture is materialistic, making much of the conquests of what we are and have, emphasizing who we are and the goods and services we enjoy as achievements due exclusively to scientific and technical advance or to the global expansion of the world market and the ability of each person to acquire with money whatever he wants.

Herein lies the importance of Thanksgiving Day in our North American culture; it is an opportunity to remind ourselves that we should be grateful, that we can be thankful for what we are and have, in the midst of a society geared to opulence, luxury and waste, to comfort and exaggeration.

Thanksgiving Day thus becomes an annual event in which we are invited to remember, live, celebrate, share and express the essence of our humanity: that of being thankful. And for that reason this day constitutes a tacit but festive protest against pride and self-sufficiency.

This gives greater importance to the sense and significance of this North American celebration when we are reminded that this date — that brings together millions for the festive and thankful encounter with their loved ones at home and around the table — is not motivated by religious traditions or institutions, nor by political parties or an ideology of any kind. It constitutes simply a moment in the life of the family to recognize our debt to be thankful for what we have received —and, in the case of Christian humanism— to recognize that those benefits come to us from God, the Creator, the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus of Nazareth as our good and compassionate Father. That is to say, as Christians we recognize God’s loving presence in the daily activity of what we are and have, and the gratitude is therefore virtuous and an essential characteristic of the life of each Christian disciple.

Anyone able to express gratitude because he recognizes the presence of good is able to be joyful. That is to say that joy is the consequence of gratitude. Gratitude therefore, not only gives us joy but also commits us to share what we are and have with others, especially with the most needy.

Therefore, let us celebrate this day of THANKSGIVING in order to cultivate what should be a permanent attitude in our life: one of living with the joy of gratitude that expands as we share with others, with our brothers and sisters, and with men and women everywhere.

The Heart's Memory

Each year, as Thanksgiving Day arrives, I remember the Gospel story in which only one out of ten cured lepers --a foreigner--  returned to Jesus to express his gratitude and to give glory to God for being cured.

This nation’s historical tradition invites us to give thanks during one day each year. Without doubt, it is the date which gets the most people together. It is the most familiar and nationally recognized of all celebrations in the United States.  The tradition of this celebration goes way back to a historical gesture of which not all know the story but the majority celebrates. It is all due to the fact that the attitude and action of being grateful and giving thanks is a profoundly human tendency, and because of it, profoundly divine.

  

In the Eucharist, we Christians have the fountain, the base, and the beginning and end of the Christian life. The Greek word “eucaristía” means precisely, “to give thanks”. That is to say that the most authentic and genuine Christian posture is to live giving thanks to God who gives us all we are and all we have. 

In the present “consumer driven society”, the importance we give to money, the importance we give to having instead of to being, impedes us from remembering that always and in all circumstances we are not self-sufficient; that we do not auto-provide ourselves. We do not remember the fact that others work to give us things and services which we enjoy; that to live, we all need each other; that we are, beyond rational animals, beings which are solidary in good and evil; social beings that, as human beings and believers are part of the creative work of God, and that the main dynamic is to serve.

When we become conscious of our social nature and our importance in a creation in which everything created serves to help us live each day in the spirit of service and gratitude.

What allows our hearts to be thankful is the capacity for opening our senses and being conscious of everything we have and everything we are. The consequences of this thankful understanding come without delay: the grateful human being is a joyful man or woman, confident, humble and hopeful . . . and waiting on that loving presence which surrounds us, and which Christians call Holy Trinity.

When Jesus teaches us to see all good things as gifts from God, he at the same time teaches us to give all things as gifts. In other words, every good gift received from God commits us to place all at the service of our brothers and sisters, following a lifestyle that does not hoard life selfishly but favors all, especially the needy. Therefore, gratitude and gratefulness are attitudes which require of each of us a time and space in which all human beings can have the capacity, the possibility and the joy of being grateful. 

Gratitude is an attitude, but because it is an attitude it is also an obligation. Therefore on Thanksgiving Day we are grateful but also give away . . . May it be that, more than things we give our time, our presence, our lives –and not only one day a year—but each day of our lives. 

May you all have a Happy Thanksgiving Day! May we all be able to always be grateful and to aid others in having a reason to always be grateful!!

Thankful, and expectant…

Once a year, the inhabitants of this great nation submerge themselves in the festival most characteristic of the American spirit: the celebration of a DAY OF THANKGIVING and, although with the passing of time it has been paganized and secularized so much that the celebratory events have been disconnected from any reference to the Transcendent One, for believers in Christ every expression of THANKSGIVING causes us to reflect on the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit, for we see ourselves as beloved sons and daughters of our compassionate and merciful Father. We recognize that from God comes “every perfect gift” (1 Cor 7,7) and that all that we are and have we have received “freely” from God and for that we must give him thanks (Mat 10,8). Therefore, the Eucharistic preface reminds us: “It is truly just and necessary, it is our debt and our salvation, to GIVE YOU THANKS, always and in every place, Lord…”.

Thus the DAY OF THANKSGIVING is not only the historical remembrance of an event that occurred between natives and colonizers, but especially the wisest, most honest, appropriate and unique posture that corresponds to the creature before the Creator and Son who is with the Father: GIVING THANKS.

In this way, human gratitude for God’s freely given favors becomes a permanent attitude of life, a life style, a way of being and acting in the world and not simply a question of annual rites without content or true gratitude.

In the economic frenzy of our society, in the daily push to accumulate power, pleasure and possessions, in the midst of the great political and social concerns that envelope us every day, it is a blessing that an annual date reminds us of how we need to recognize how much we are loved, how fortunate we are, how much we can share with gratitude.

In a hedonistic and consumer-oriented society, in a capitalistic economic society, we may falsely believe that everything we are and have we have achieved, thanks to the power of money provided by our work. But little by little life reveals to us another truth: there are values, truths, goods and favors in the human soul that cannot be purchased or sold; values and truths that are discovered in the deepest and most intimate essence of the human being that will always lead us to live with thankfulness, like the gift of life, liberty, beauty, solidarity, etc.

For that reason the DAY OF THANKSGIVING is a celebration and a commitment, since to be thankful requires all of us to create conditions in which everyone, without distinction, can live with gratitude. That is to say, to build a society in equity and justice, in solidarity and compassion, in truth, freedom and peace.

This year 2012, soon to end, we have had painful experiences in our personal, family and community history, in our life as a nation and in the whole world (warring conflicts, natural phenomena with loss of life, etc.), and yet, as those who trust in Christ we believe that, even in the most difficult experiences, with pain and great suffering, men and women can continue to be thankful for we can “continue to hope when hope is gone” (Rom 4,18) and because Christians understand that it is in the course of history (with the weaving of experiences of good and evil, among lights and shadows) that God makes himself known, in deed and word (DV 2).

I invite you then to find motives to be thankful; to build a society in which we can all continue to be thankful and expectant. Have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!