HOMILY - THANKSGIVING DAY

Thanksgiving ought to be a natural for us as. After all, how often are we reminded that “Eucharist” – the center of our Catholic spirituality – means “thanksgiving?”  The opening dialogue of the Preface at the beginning of the Eucharist Prayer reminds us “It is right to give God THANKS and praise. Yes, “thanksgiving” is in the makeup of our spiritual DNA. But just what is it we are thankful for?

Oh, there are many answers to that today. I am grateful for the precious gift of life and the privilege of spending that life with you, the faith-filled “living stones” of the church of Saint Joseph. I am grateful that in a few hours I will be around the table with family, giving thanks for our each other, for the bounty we share, for my sister who prepares that bounty as deliciously as did my beloved mother, for the freedom our nation provides, for  the precious memory of those who shared life with on earth and who now, we pray, live the fullness of life in the heavenly kingdom. Those blessings are on all of our minds as we gather for this prayer that is the “great thanksgiving” of our church. And rightly so; there is much for which give God thanks and praise.

But perhaps today is a good day for us to dig a little deeper, to get to the heart of the matter about our gathering for the Eucharist. For what we do here is focused not so much on the things of the earth, as wonderful as many of those things are. No, what we do here on this great day, but on every day we gather for the Eucharist, invites us to fix our attention beyond the blessings of the relatives and the turkey and the flag and the parades and especially beyond the full shelves that go on for miles if you are to believe the fliers in this morning’s paper. Here, as the Second Vatican Council reminded us, “we share in that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, and in which Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle (cf. Apoc. 21:2; Col. 3:1; Heb. 8:2); we sing a hymn to the Lord’s glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, until He, our life, shall appear and we too will appear with Him in glory (cf. Phil.3:20; Col. 3:4).” [Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, chapter 1, paragraph 8]

Here, for so brief a time, we allow our hearts and minds and voices to be lifted up beyond the limits of what we can see and what we can hear and what we can touch, and enter into the great prayer of thanksgiving that is the death and resurrection of Jesus his promise to return in glory. “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.”

Why all this fuss today? Why this little catechism lesson on the Mass? Why isn’t Father Snyder saying more about the tradition of the Thanksgiving table and the pilgrims, and the Macy’s parade and the wonderful balloons? Well, trust me. I love the bounty of the table and the fantasy of the parade. But every now and then we have to call ourselves back to what we are all about as a people of faith. We have to lift our eyes beyond the limited horizons of our earthly life to see with the eyes of faith what God has in store for us in the vast, eternal expanse that is his kingdom without end; for as Saint Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippians, my favorite letter, our citizenship is in heaven. Our earthly existence will have meaning only when we remember we carry a heavenly passport. Remembering that is what our coming together for the Eucharist is all about.

We enter the Church and bless ourselves with the water that reminds us of our baptism; we leave behind the “good stuff” and the “bad stuff” of our daily life and for a time we take on with the saints and angels in heaven who join us for prayer, the “best stuff” that is our union with Christ Jesus in the wisdom of his word and the nourishment that is the sacrament of his body and blood.

When the turkey is gone and the pumpkin pie a happy memory; when the crazies of our family we button our lips for on this fourth Thursday of November begin to drive us crazy again on the fourth Friday; when the challenges and hurts and worries we put on hold for a time surface again, we are able to face them all because here, at the Thanksgiving table that is the Eucharist, we remember who we are as Christ’s beloved, made in his image and likeness.  Here, at this altar, we remember that we face the stresses of our days armed with more than our own devices; we are filled with God’s strength, God’s grace, a weapon more powerful than we can ever imagine.

 Here, in this holy place that is our parish church, even though the time is brief, we are given strength for an eternity of living, the strength won us by the suffering, death and rising of Jesus. It is his victory we celebrate in this great prayer of Thanksgiving. It is his victory that, above every other blessing, that we give thanks for today.