Give Thanks Everywhere and Always:

Faith Unites Us with a Family Much Larger Than We Realize

Bishop John Stowe

The year 2020 continues to be challenging in so many ways. In the midst of a global pandemic, we have been stretched to find new ways to stay connected and to stay safe. We have experienced the suspension of the celebration of Masses and lived through a Holy Week and Easter without public liturgies. We have learned the weak- nesses of our health care system and the inequalities that often go unnoticed in our society, and we have learned to do familiar things in new ways, from education to worship to social events and more.

Now, as we find ourselves entering the final stretch of the calendar year and approaching a new liturgical year, we are beginning to plan as best we can for what society calls “the holidays” — even as we know that once again things are going to be different than anything we have experienced before.
The fourth Thursday of November is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day, a quite American version of the harvest festivals common to most cultures. Our American holiday is a civic, rather than a religious, holiday — proclaimed by the government as a day set aside for giving thanks to God. While not a holy day, much less a day of obligation, in normal times we find that Masses on that day are well-attended as families travel to be together and everyone’s attitude turns to being grateful.

As Catholics, we can recall that our primary form of worship, the celebration of the Eucharist, takes the Greek word for “thanksgiving” as its name. In every Mass, we gather and give thanks to God for revealing himself in his Word and, above all, in the person of Jesus who lays down his life for us. At the Second Vatican Council, the Church declared that this “thanksgiving,” the Eucharist, is the source and summit of our lives of faith. The Lord feeds us and transforms us to be his presence in the world; we bring our lives and experiences back to the table of the Lord and ask God to trans- form them along with the gifts that we bring.

As difficult as this year has been, we heed the sage advice of the Apostle Paul, to give thanks in all circumstances. How have we grown in the course of this pandemic? What have we learned? What needs to change? Have we rediscovered our dependence on God? Have we rediscovered our interdependence upon each other? Have we learned the lesson that we cannot survive alone, much less thrive alone? That should not be a surprise to those of us who call ourselves disciples of Jesus, but it is easy to get caught up in the world of self-sufficiency and autonomy that our society considers normative.

Pope Francis has been trying to draw out the lessons from this pandemic on a global scale. He tells us that we cannot come through a crisis without having changed. Will the change be for the better or for the worse? Consistent with a message throughout his papacy, Francis has reminded us that we form one human family, that Christ teaches us our relationship to one another.

The pope’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti  (“Brothers and Sisters All”), reflects beautifully on the significance of this inter-relationship for the survival of humanity. Naturally these reflections are born of the insights of striving to guide a universal Church in a time of pandemic; they also build on his teaching in the previous encyclical Laudato Si’ on the care of our common home and the inter-relatedness of all creation. From the very first days of his pontificate, Pope Francis has invited us to encounter Christ by encountering the forgotten humanity that lives on the margins. He reminds us of the biblical truth that our salvation is connected with theirs.

As our Thanksgiving celebrations are altered this year in a variety of ways, I invite you to consider a different Thanksgiving feast. Like the pilgrims and Native Americans of the legendary early Thanksgivings, let us broaden the list of guests to include people different than ourselves. While it might not be physically possible to break bread with people around the globe, we can bring them to mind and learn a bit about what daily life is like in Africa, Asia, Latin American, Europe, Oceania and everywhere.

We can consider how our family is truly much larger than how we usually think about it. We can be mindful of those who do not have access to the basic nutrition to survive, those whose lands are divided by gang violence or war, those who suffer the consequences of climate change in such a way that they can no longer provide for their families. We can think of those who lost loved ones in the course of this pandemic and those who have lost work or their regular income. We are all at this global table together — and it is time to give thanks.