For us Catholics the whole Puritan pilgrim thing doesn't really connect with our heritage. And in a sense we don't need the holiday because every Sunday we are required to come together to celebrate the Eucharist, the ultimate thanksgiving celebration.
But on another level we can get so used to going to mass week after week that we forget the thanksgiving aspect of mass. For that reason, we as much as anyone need to stop on this Thanksgiving Day, and look back over the last 12 months.
It is far too easy for us to look at our lives and see the challenges, the stresses, the ways in which life isn't what we expected or wanted it to be at this moment.
If we are Christians we return to our fundamental belief that "all things work together for good for those who love God..."
As we say at mass, we can find something to be thankful for "always and everywhere." Today before we fall into the turkey coma, let us look back at 2013 and get specific. Call to mind the people and things that we are most thankful for in the last year.
And if you are sitting there thinking, "I can't think of anything." I would simply say think harder. Every human being in the world has something for which to be thankful.
We believe in a God that has constantly been at work and is constantly at work, and is the God "from whom all good things come." That being the case, there is never a moment in my life when I should not be thankful.
Those of you who know my story at all know that from the very beginning there have been challenges, but I can say from the bottom of my heart that there is nothing that has gone wrong in my life for which I am not now grateful, because I have seen how God can transform what looks like a curse into a blessing. And I trust that the ones in which I don't yet see the blessing; it's there. And at some point in this life or the next it will all come together. As long as I try to stay on God's path.
And no matter what I do, the kingdom of God is coming.
Thanks be to God.
