A MESSAGE FOR THANKSGIVING DAY
The holidays are upon us once
again. This week we shall be celebrating
that peculiarly American feast day, at once both civil and religious, in which Church
and State give the appearance of setting aside their constitutional separation,
and join together in giving thanks to the God from whom the authority of both proceeds. One can only wonder how long it can be before
this inconvenient truth dawns on the warriors of Antifa and their ilk, and they
rise up to ban Thanksgiving Day as being offensive to atheists, and contrary to
the values of inclusivity and diversity that they so fanatically espouse...
Meanwhile, let us set aside such pessimistic
considerations and enjoy the holiday. As
the name suggests, Thanksgiving is a day for saying thank you. It has its origin in the days when the
livelihood of most Americans depended on the success of the harvest, a time
when a great feast on this day was not just a symbol of a rich harvest, but
literally the very fruit of that harvest.
The hymn in today's bulletin reflects this happy past, and the relief
and rejoicing of the season, now that "all is safely gathered in, 'ere the
winter storms begin."
Today, our rejoicing can only be
a shadow of what the good folks must have felt back in those early Thanksgiving
days. After all, we no longer envisage
the possibility of going hungry during the winter months, when a summer of bad
weather meant a literal disaster at harvest time and possible starvation in the
long cold months that followed.
Nowadays, we blithely ride off to town in our comfortable cars and find everything
we want on the shelves at Kroger's, stocked to capacity as usual. How can we sincerely rejoice when there seems
to be no possibility of sorrow and deprivation?
Nevertheless, we give thanks to
God. Deo
gratias! For all good things come
from above, and it is the good Lord who gives them to us. If you want to know why we should be grateful
to God, read the Communion verse from today's Mass: "Verily I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye
pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." We live in a time of prosperity, and perhaps
many of us do not actually "need" anything. Perhaps our greatest fear is that we might
sleep in late the day after Thanksgiving and miss the big sale at Old
Navy. If so, spare a thought for the
victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida and Maria in Puerto Rico. Remember the untold numbers of bereaved after
the terrorist attacks in New York City and Sutherland Springs, Texas. We are very fortunate if the "terrible
swift sword" did not strike our own families this year, and our gratitude
to God should come from our heart.
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