This week as you are all well aware we will celebrate Thanksgiving Day. This day was set aside by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 as a day to give thanks. To give thanks for the bounty of the harvest and to give thanks for the blessings bestowed on our country. Each year the president again proclaims the 4th Thursday of November as a national holiday and as a day set aside to gives thanks.

In the years since Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, the focus of this day has seemed to change from an opportunity to give thanks to an opportunity to eat too much and to do very little. Thanksgiving Day has become to many a day to rest in preparation for the beginning of the Christmas Shopping season. For some families it is a wonderful gathering marked with laughter and sharing but in other families, it becomes opportunity for old wounds and old transgressions to be renewed. In very many homes, a wonderful banquet is set out and dinner begins without a word of thanks, without a moment of acknowledgement of that for which we should be grateful.

Despite the many challenges we have faced this year we still have much for which we need be grateful. As we gather with our families and our friends, as we gather around our table, as we enjoy the banquet prepared for us may we each make it a point to offer thanks for all the good things in our lives. May we give thanks for family and friends, for food and for warmth. May we give thanks for the many ways in which God is guiding us and for the many ways in which God is guarding us. May we give thanks for the struggles in our lives that lead us to see and to know God’s love, God’s grace in our lives.

A great way to begin this day of thanks is at Mass. The very word Eucharist means thanksgiving. Before we travel, before welcome guest, before we get all caught up in the joy, in the busyness, in the bounty of Thanksgiving Day may we gathered with our community may we be generous in giving thanks for the gift of life and for all this gift offers us.

Next Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent season. As you remember, it is a season of preparation for the celebration of the moment in history when God became one of us. We prepare to celebrate the birth of a child who gave flesh to hope. We prepare to celebrate the moment in time when salvation came into the world. Unfortunately, Advent often is ignored in the rush to get to Christmas. May I renew my annual invitation to the quiet and the calm of Advent. May I invite all of us to find quiet, reflective, and prayerful time to prepare ourselves for the joy and peace that comes to us through the miracle of Christmas.