Our nation’s officially-designated day for giving thanks has come and gone.
This Thanksgiving, my husband and I went to Mass at St. Michael the Archangel parish in Streator. We have both done this as single people in the past, but there hasn’t been a Mass on Thanksgiving Day in Streator for quite a few years. So, one of the first things we were grateful for, was the opportunity to go to Mass locally and give thanks. We hope it will continue in the future.
(A special shout out to Fr. Francis Strong for offering the Mass, and for his excellent homily, where he cited words from Abraham Lincoln and spoke of how the word eucharist means giving thanks, so each time we go to Mass (the Eucharist), we are there to offer thanks.)
The church was pretty full, and the altar was filled with non-perishable food items to donate to the Streatorland Food Pantry. It was a beautiful sight to behold – dozens of bags of food placed upon the altar of God by parishioners in thanksgiving for the abundance of blessings we are perpetually given, so that others without resources of their own might be blessed too.
One thing I learned long ago in my faith journey is how God cannot be outdone in generosity. God is constantly – constantly – showering us with gifts of grace, both spiritual and temporal. Look no further than the gospel renderings of Jesus turning five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed thousands of people.
Sadly, we are too often focused on other things to notice just how generous God is to each one of us.
The minute you take up gratitude as an everyday spiritual practice, naming at least five things each day you are grateful for, your entire life changes. You begin to see blessings everywhere. Practically overnight, you are all of a sudden aware of everything as a gift, where once you only saw what you thought was lacking.
It makes me wonder how God must feel when God is always in giving mode, and we don’t notice, but whine and complain because we are missing something we think we need in life. Even when our finances are low and our outer circumstances are not what we would like them to be, our lives are still filled with blessings.
We must relearn what a blessing is; we must relearn that everything has potential to be a blessing, even those things that challenge us. Especially those things that challenge us.
At Mass on Thanksgiving Day, something felt different to me. And this is the reason why Thanksgiving Day Mass has always been my favorite day of the year to go to Mass, because everyone is united as one in the Body of Christ. There was no felt sense of division over political or other beliefs. It was refreshing for me to not be thinking about all that is wrong with the world, and to instead think of how God continues to walk with us each day, even during times of terrible suffering, corruption and injustice.
Those at Mass on Thanksgiving morning didn’t have to be there. We were there because we wanted to be there, primarily to offer thanks to God. Throughout our lives, we have experienced ups and downs, often in big ways, and yet we have learned over time how faithful God is in every season of life. And in that desire to offer thanks to God, we were united as one, regardless of life experiences, backgrounds and priorities that influence our values and political persuasions, but are unknown to each other.
We were united as one, because that is what the Body of Christ is, one, even in our differences and the legitimate reasons we each have for the causes and the issues we hold dear.
May we each remember as we begin this holiday season that we belong together.
“For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.” ~ Romans 12:4-5
SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.
SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.