Thanksgiving

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We are told in the Entrance Antiphon of the Mass of Thanksgiving, “Sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs among yourselves, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts” (Eph. 5:19).

This week could be called the week of the angels, but it could also be called the week of thanksgiving, a special week in which to thank God for all the special things that He gives to us.

One of the saints says, “Always be giving thanks to God constantly, for everything, for what seems good and for what seems bad, for what is sweet and for what is bitter, for the white and the black, for small things and big things, for whatever seems meager and whatever seems bountiful, for what is temporal and for what reaches into eternity.”

We will raise up our minds and hearts in thanksgiving to God when we see the hand of God in everything.

We make that act of faith when we say the finger of God is here in this particular thing. We may not see it, we may not understand it, it could be a mystery, it could be painful, but we somehow will know the hand of God is here behind these things.

God is working. He is at work in this moment, and He has permitted this particular thing. He wants to bring good out of this particular situation, omnia in bonum (Rom. 8:28).

Every situation is a situation to give thanks to God because we know the finger of God is here. We make an act of faith and hope when we say those words.

It’s interesting to see how constant in the liturgy are the words of thanksgiving: “We do well always and everywhere to give you thanks.” The first line of the Eucharistic Prayer.

“Always and everywhere.” There are no exceptions; it is a constant, because every moment is a grace, every little thing we have is a gift.

“You have no need of our praise,” we are told in the Fourth Preface, “yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift.”

“Our desire to thank you,” our awareness that I have nothing, our awareness of your gifts, we realize, thank you Lord for this particular thing. Help me to have greater desires to thank you, as I realize the magnitude of what you’ve given to me.

“If you, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” (Matt. 7:11).

When we raise up our minds and hearts in thanksgiving to God, we acknowledge that “more”—possibly the things that God has given to us that He hasn't given to others, that He might not have given to us.

That this particular thing is a gift, a grace, a great help. It lifts us onto a new plane.

It helps us to live more in accordance with our supernatural calling.

Often those gifts are not just material things, Possibly, much more frequently, they are spiritual things: the grace to see this idea more clearly; the grace to understand that concept; the grace to see a certain optical angle of the presence of God in the world.

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matt. 6:26).

We look at the whole of Creation regularly, and somehow God speaks to us through these things. That “more” is there in those moments helping us to see the world and its purpose, and many aspects of it, from a divine perspective. The author of Creation is present in everything.

That can give us a great peace and a great hope, because my heavenly Father is present to me. I am reminded that I am carried in the palm of a God who loves me.

In that same Fourth Preface of Weekdays, we are told, “Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace.”

We don't add anything to God by the thanksgiving that we give. But we are the ones who grow, because we become more aware of the gift.

Humble souls are grateful souls because they realize that everything is a gift. They open their eyes to the reality that “I have nothing, I deserve nothing, I am nothing” (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 215). Anything I have is because God has given it to me.

Therefore, this norm is a norm of always because everything, in every moment, is a gift of God.

In the First Eucharistic Prayer, it says, “We come to you, Father, with praise and thanksgiving…”

We can thank Our Lord that we have a grace in our life, that every day of our life we hear these words when we come to the Mass. We may hear them unconsciously, but they are there. We hear these words all the time.

We are reminded of this reality. That in itself is a grace. “We come to you with praise and thanksgiving.”

Possibly our heart or our mind has difficulty getting on to the paten, because maybe we are still a bit sleepy, or we didn't sleep too well last night, or our mind is a million miles away—but my physical presence here is a statement.

I am saying with my feet that I want to unite myself to what's taking place on the altar, this great act of thanksgiving which the Mass is.

God has given us the grace, and the custom, and the habit, and the possibilities of being present every day of our life in this great act of thanksgiving.

Further on in the Eucharistic Prayer I, it says, “He gave you thanks and praise…”

Christ was always lifting up His heart and soul in thanksgiving to His heavenly Father. A great pathway to happiness. It's impossible to be grateful and to be unhappy.

If we're ever unhappy about something, try to make acts of thanksgiving for that thing. It opens your eyes to a different way of looking at things.

By being grateful, we are happy. Because we are grateful always, we try to be happy always. We have the means, because we see there's a bigger picture. The hand of God is at work in these particular moments.

“We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you” (Eucharistic Prayer II).

We're nothing. We have our sinful nature. We have our addictions, we have our miseries, our failures, but yet, in spite all of that, you called us. You counted us “worthy to stand in your presence and serve you.”

And still, there may be so many things in our lives that we have not fully grasped—that they’re gifts. Or things that God has given to us that we have taken for granted. We don't thank Him enough.

An elderly priest in Singapore told me how he had to get a cataract operation on his eyes. He was 81 years of age.

The doctor told him, “You won't be able to read for two or three days.” He was thinking, “What will I do for two or three days?”

He suddenly said, after fifty years of being a priest, I, realized how much we priests need our eyes—to say Mass, to read the Breviary, to give a class, to do all sorts of things like anybody else.

As he was wondering what he was going to do for the next three days, the following morning, he said, the Gospel in the Mass was about the man born blind (John 9:1-12).

The Lord was hitting me in the teeth with a baseball bat: “Wake up! I've given you 81 years of sight—not three days or three weeks or three years, but 81 years. And here you are wondering about, What am I going to do for three days.”

When we see the bigger picture, we realize we have so many things to be grateful for.

Often the simple ordinary things of our human body, our faculties, are something that can lead us to lift our hearts and souls continually to God.

As the Antiphon said, “Sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs among yourselves, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts”—because I can see, because I can hear, because I have limbs that work, especially when we see around us, possibly, so many children who don't have these things.

“To those whom much has been given, much will be demanded” (Luke 12:48).

Our five talents (Matt. 25:15). Lord, how do you want me to use all the talents you've given to me?

First and foremost, help me to thank you for them so that I become more aware of them.

Don't go around saying, ‘I have no talents. I wasn't there when the talents were being given out.’ We all have talents—immense talents. Over time God wants us to use those things to give Him great praise.

“All creation rightly gives you praise.” Third Eucharistic Prayer. “All creation rightly gives you praise.”

Every time the birds sing, the whole of creation necessarily gives God praise. The tiles of the floor, the linens of the altar, ordinary material things, the animals—they don't have any other choice. Their whole existence gives praise to God.

Only in the human heart does God find resistance because of our freedom. We could say that we want to unite ourselves to the whole of creation.

Our first thought in the morning could be a thought for God, a thought of thanksgiving. Thank you for this night. Thank you for the fact that I had a bed to lie down on. Maybe I had a pillow that had sheets, or a blanket, a roof over my head, so many things that other people didn't have.

Maybe I didn't sleep so well, but I did get a few hours. As we grow in life we realize that sleep is a gift.

We are encouraged to have seven and a half to eight hours of rest. We are not encouraged to have seven and a half to eight hours of sleep. There is a difference. As we get older in life we realize that one is not the other. But we realize then that sleep is a gift. Thank you, Lord.

St. Josemaría said, “Lord I slept a little less last night, but I prayed a little more.”

Even if I don't feel like it, I know that I have rested. My chemistry is ready for another day and a whole pile of other things.

“We offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice” (Third Eucharistic Prayer). We live to give you thanks. We live for the Mass.

We bring everything there that should be there, even our ingratitude for all those other things that somehow or other we know that we have, but we haven't thanked you for them: the spiritual gifts that pass unnoticed, the graces that you give us, the ideas that pass through our head, the initiatives that we have, the ability to be able to do certain jobs which maybe, we take for granted—to write, to put two sentences together.

We bring it to you. Place it on the paten.

In the Fourth Eucharistic prayer it says, “Father, we acknowledge your greatness: all your actions show your wisdom and love.”

“We acknowledge your greatness.” We see it. We're aware of it. We thank you, Father.

We live with this awareness that you're beside us all the time. You're in control of the world, even if it might seem the opposite.

In this funny world that you have created—you've placed us here to be a witness to you, to live out this lifestyle, so that many other people can come to know you in different ways or, from the witness of our lives, can be led to see things they never saw before.

That same Eucharistic Prayer says, “He showed the depth of his love.”

Often with the gifts God gives us, He shows the depth of His love. So many things.

Therefore, we have to be careful with ingratitude. Nine of the ten lepers were ungrateful (Luke 17:11-19).

There’s an ungrateful servant in the Gospel (Matt.18:24-35).

The older son in the parable of the prodigal son is ungrateful (Luke 15:25-32). He takes everything for granted: the work I'm doing, the blessings that I have. He begins to complain because he doesn't realize the gift. “He never gave me these other things.” He gets angry.

Lord, help me to open my eyes to thank you for the things I don't have, to thank you for the crosses, the contradictions, the misunderstandings, the miscommunications, the little injustices that you may want me to bear in this life, because all those things are gifts to help me to grow in holiness—the purpose of my Christian vocation.

Even the temptations, we can thank God for. He allows those temptations to lead us to a greater faith, hope, and humility, to know our weaknesses, to run back to Him like little children.

It's easy to be grateful to God for the good things. Maybe it's not so easy to be grateful for the not-so-pleasant things.

And there are so many things that we take for granted for which we need to be grateful.

You've probably heard the story before of the time many years ago, when I got several bed sheets, I think a thousand bedsheets, that came from Singapore.

We distributed them in different places, and we kept a few for a shelter we had for street kids there in Eastland. It's a nice slum. Some of these kids had never had bed sheets before.

A few weeks later I asked one of them, ‘How are the bed sheets going? How are you finding things?’

He said, ‘Very good, thank you. But I wonder if, the next time, if they could be black.’

I was wondering about black bed sheets. Now why would you want black bed sheets? Of all the crazy things in the world. Who ever heard of black bed sheets?

He said, ‘They could be black, so they don't show the dirt.’ Perfectly normal male psychology.

I was thinking, I'll try and contact the manager of the five-star hotel in Singapore and ask him if he wouldn't mind changing all his bed sheets to black. We could organize a whole new culture of hospitality all over the world. If you go someplace sometime and you find black bed sheets, you know where the idea came from.

But one little kid in one little place has this amazing idea which has the potential to change the world’s culture, because I never experienced those things before.

We're told in Scripture, “If you knew the gift of God…” (John 4:10). Often we don't know the gift of God. We don't realize it.

Thanking God for His benefits is a sign of faith, of hope, of love. Then we realize why in Scripture there's a constant encouragement to give thanks to God.

“The hymns, the psalms, the words of all just men, filled with praise and thanksgiving to God” (cf. Eph. 5:19).

The Psalmist says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps. 103:2).

The expression of thanks is an extraordinarily beautiful way of relating to God, and also to others. Everybody loves to be thanked. The person who says, ‘Oh, you don't need to thank me’—you better be doubly sure that you thanked them.

Everybody loves to be thanked. And God likes to be thanked.

We're reminded that if you thank somebody, they're much more inclined to give you more. So also with Our Father God.

As a form of prayer, it's very pleasing to God. In the same way, it's an anticipation of the praise that we will give Him eternally.

We call the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist precisely Thanksgiving—Eucharistia—as it's a foretaste of that eternal happiness.

Lord, help me to see more things for which I can thank you, whether they're big or small.

You can find a million small things to give God thanks for every day; possibly things for which we've never thanked Him before.

Sometimes when something goes wrong, or we can't find our glasses, or the key, or our phone, or something's dropped out of our pocket, suddenly we miss that thing. We have to look for it. I wonder where I left it.

But then you remember all the times when I didn't lose it, or it was in my pocket, or I could use those particular things. Maybe I didn't thank God for all those small little things.

This week of the angels, we can receive valuable help from the angels in giving thanks to God, especially, the angels around the tabernacle are constantly giving God praise, making up for our deficiencies.

They're there like helpers in this whole process. One of the lines of the Eucharistic Prayer I says, “May your angel take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven.”

May your angel take this sacrifice, this Mass, to your altar in heaven.

Every time we do a part of our work, we could say the same thing: “May your angel lift up this work that I have been able to accomplish”—perhaps this floor that now looks so shiny; or this other job that I was able to complete; or this other thing that I got done despite the pain in my back, or this bit of arthritis, or my headache, or my lack of energy today, or my feeling of tiredness, or all sorts of other things; the pieces of bad news that I received.

I was able to accomplish this task. “May your angel take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven” and give you thanks for always. The angels are present. They lift up these things.

We're told in Christ Is Passing By, “If we love Christ who offers himself for us, we will feel compelled to find a few minutes after Mass for an intimate personal thanksgiving, which will prolong in the silence of our hearts that other thanksgiving which is the Eucharist” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 92).

The special moments after Mass, or special moments of thanksgiving, which we should take care of in a special way—keep it alive and vibrant, find new ways and means of giving thanks.

Let the Holy Spirit work to lead us to new prayers that can express our sentiments in those moments, that we use them well, put our heart and mind and soul into them.

“How are we to approach him, what are we to say, how should we behave? Christian life is not made up of rigid norms…” we're told. “Still, I feel that, on many occasions, the central theme of our conversation with Christ, in our thanksgiving after Holy Mass, can be the consideration that our Lord is our king, physician, teacher, and friend” (ibid.).

Our King, because He has ransomed us from sin and brought us to the Kingdom of Light.

Thank Him for our formation—so much light in our life, ideas, truths, to which we are continually exposed, so we're led forward in appreciating that light.

We ask Our Lord to reign in our hearts, in the words that we say today, in our thoughts, in each of our actions.

We see Jesus the Physician because He's the remedy for all our illnesses, our egoism, our selfishness, our laziness, our comfort.

We approach Communion as He was approached by the blind, the deaf, the paralytic. We try to remember that we have the source of all life, putting Himself at our disposal within our souls.

He is the life. Jesus is the Teacher whom we recognize as having the words of eternal life. “Where else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)—powerful words in Scripture that we read in the Mass occasionally.

He has so many things to teach us. There's so much ignorance in the world, yet we have so much light.

Interestingly, Mother Teresa says that ignorance is the greatest poverty.

God has made us so wealthy, so spiritually rich.

Often we focus on material richness as the world does, and we forget the wealth with which God has crowned us. He wants us to use that wealth well. We're spiritual millionaires. So many wonderful things.

Our Lord the Teacher is constantly teaching us, repeating things again and again. We know that the experts say that parents have to repeat things 500 times before little children get them on the 501st. We're like those little children.

Jesus the Teacher is repeating the same lessons over and over so that finally we get the message. We shouldn't be surprised that it takes us time for the penny to drop to realize the beauty of the greatness, the depth of that particular idea, or this sacrament, or these other words of Scripture.

Lord, help us to listen. Through Communion, we learn to look at our friend, the true friend, from whom we learn all about friendship. “No longer do I call you servants, but I have called you friends” (John 15:15).

Thank you, Lord, for inviting me to such a friendship, so that I come to my prayer and I talk to you. I unload my heart. I find new energy for the journey. I find solace in your companionship.

My heart flies to you during the day because I love you, because I want to love you more, because you are love. I’m moved to tell you what's happening in my life.

I always find an encouraging word, a consoling word, which comes to me sometimes, possibly through my guardian angel, who thanks you for me and helps me to do things a little bit better.

Our Lady said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47). This profound act of thanksgiving poured forth from the heart of Mary.

“He looked upon the lowliness of his handmaid. Henceforth all nations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).

Mary, may you help us to use well this week of the angels, this week of thanksgiving, to grow in our heart, in our soul, that spirit of thanksgiving that you have, which led you to say such beautiful words, which can be on our lips for all eternity.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JSD