28 November 1985
Emmitsburg, Maryland

My dear Sisters, my dear Confreres,

St. Vincent was exactly forty years of age when, in 1621, the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated here in America. Thanksgiving Day had been celebrated for exactly two hundred years when St. Elizabeth Ann left this Valley in 1821 for heaven. What St. Vincent's sentiments might have been, had he been told about Thanksgiving Day, we do not know. We have no extant letter of St. Vincent for the year 1621. We do know, however, that many years later he would observe to a Confrere in one of his letters that "ingratitude is the crime of crimes." (Coste III, Eng. ed., ltr. 850, p. 42). That, from the pen of St. Vincent, is a strong statement. Even if St. Vincent had never expressed that sentiment, we can safely surmise that he would have heartily endorsed the idea of Thanksgiving Day, for is there any canonized saint who is not a profoundly grateful person? It is almost a definition for a saint that he or she is a person who celebrates Thanksgiving, not one day in the year, but every day, and many times every day. There is no canonized saint who did not center his or her life on what the Second Vatican Council calls "the source and summit of all apostolic activity" which is the Eucharist. Eucharist, as we were taught when we were young, means thanksgiving, and if Eucharist means thanksgiving, then living the Eucharist, living an apostolic life, must mean living lives of thanksgiving.

There was an atheist philosopher in the last century who liked to taunt Christians by saying that if they were a redeemed people, the expressions on their faces did not give that impression. He might equally have said if there is at the center of a Christian's life a mystery which they call Eucharist or thanksgiving, they do not give the impression of being very grateful people. The truth is, however, that we are a Eucharistic people who are meant to cultivate consciously thanksgiving, not one day, but every day, for everything, for all things, great and small.

Recently in one of our Latin American Provinces, a group of young Sisters asked me if I had any advice to give them. I had no prepackaged reply to that question. I could have recommended them to read and ponder well every paragraph and every line of our Constitutions and Statutes. I could have suggested to them that if they really wanted some up-to-the-minute advice, they would find some excellent suggestions in the final document of our recent General Assembly. All this was what I could have said to the Sisters and did not say. What I did say to them was just this. "Cultivate, my dear Sisters, a sense of thanksgiving." If we cultivate a sense of thanksgiving, we will be people of joy. We will be conscious of the many good things we have received from God. Becoming more deeply conscious of the many good things we have received from God, we will wish to share them with those who are so much less fortunate than we. If we cultivate a sense of thanksgiving, we will be joyful persons and it is joy that generates energy and enthusiasm. It is thanksgiving that cuts back the weeds of cynicism and bitterness, which can at times make us hypercritical of the Church and of our Community. It is the weeds of cynicism and bitterness that blight the growth of our souls into deeper union with Jesus Christ. It is these weeds that prevent the opening out of ourselves to the sunshine of God's grace. It is thanksgiving that gives us hope. It is thanksgiving that keeps our hearts young, even when we are beginning to feel the weight of years. When, in the old rite of Mass, the priest came to the foot of the altar, he began with the words of a psalm, "I will go to the altar of God," and according to one version of that psalm, the line continues to read: "to the God who gives me back the joy of my youth." (Ps 43:4).

If here in the United States Thanksgiving Day has been for some centuries a very special day, in recent years it has taken on a significance that is more important than ever. We are living in an age of protest. We are children of an angry generation. How many prophets of protest we have in our countries and in our cities today. We have true prophets of protest and false prophets. Some protest, such as the denial of human rights and the oppression of the poor, is justified. There are other forms of protest that are sinister or ill-advised, but I often ask myself, where are the prophets of thanksgiving? A Christian is called to be a thanksgiving person. Even more so are consecrated persons called to be prophets of thanksgiving. People who have dedicated themselves through vows are conscious of the fact that they have been specially called by God to witness to His generous love. They are people who live in the awareness that "He who is mighty has done great things" (Lk 1:49) for them. Do the laity think of religious today as prophets of humble thanksgiving? Do they think of religious in this country or in other countries as being Eucharistic persons? I venture to think that religious and people like ourselves are not always seen as prophets of thanksgiving.

On this Thanksgiving Day, may I remind you that thanksgiving has two other sisters. The first sister is giving. It was G.K. Chesterton who remarked that the highest form of giving is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving has another sister. She is called forgiving. If thanksgiving is the highest form of giving, then forgiving is the most difficult form of giving. These three sisters meet each time we gather together to do that great action which Jesus Christ asked us to do in memory of Him. Our Mass begins with forgiving: asking the forgiveness of God, and it is to forgiveness that the Liturgy returns when, before Holy Communion, she asks us to forgive each other by exchanging the sign of peace and reconciliation, "Let us greet each other with a sign of peace." What is our offertory procession but an outward expression of our desire to give ourselves wholly to God with all that we have and are? Then our little giving is swept up in the great Eucharistic Prayer, in the great act of thanksgiving which Jesus Christ makes with us in the unity of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father.

These great movements of giving and forgiving and thanksgiving find expression in the second reading which you have chosen for today's Mass. "You must forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven you...everything you do or say should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus...give thanks to the Lord Jesus and to the Father." (Col 3:13,17).