Thanksgiving Day

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/112212-thanksgiving-day-mass.cfm

Miniatures at the Minnesota
State Fair

R. I will praise your name for ever, Lord.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. I will praise your name for ever, Lord.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.

The Christian attitude toward daily life begins with thanksgiving. We are grateful for the beauty all around us and for eyes to see the beauty. We are grateful for the work of our hands and the hands that do the work. 

Thanksgiving challenges both the negative attitudes of the world and the ungrateful attitudes that linger in our own hearts. If we can find no reason for gratitude we can thank God for the Spirit of Repentance that recognizes and abhors our fears, resentments and offended sense of entitlement.

Thanksgiving is a practice and an attitude. It does not just happen. Parents must teach their children gratitude, just as they teach their children cleanliness, politeness and reverence. Eventually, somewhere in later childhood, we take responsibility for our own practices and start searching for things for which to be grateful. Once the practice has taken root we thank God for the good and the bad, the pleasant and unpleasant, the desirable and the undesirable. It is all good; all are opportunities to give God Glory.

There are moments when words of gratitude do not rise from our hearts to our lips; then we must wait in silence and in sorrow. Sometimes it is better to say nothing. Like it or not, life occasionally overwhelms our virtue. It floods like a storm surge and staggers our comprehension. This too, is by God’s decree:

…who shut within doors the sea,
when it burst forth from the womb…
(who) set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door,
And said: Thus far shall you come but no farther,
and here shall your proud waves stop… (Job 38:8-11)

And when the flood washes out to sea again, we pick up our lives and thank God for whatever is left.

This annual day of prayer and thanksgiving was authorized by President Lincoln as the Civil War was ending. He would not live to see its first anniversary. To this day, a grateful nation thanks God for the bitter lessons of the War, for opportunities to atone for the crimes of our history, and for the hope of a better future.