Weekly HOMILY for November 26, 2006: Reasons for Gratitude

Thanksgiving Day, Cycle B
(Sirach 50.22-24 / I Corinthians 1.3-9 / Luke 17.11-19)
Our Lady of Grace
November 23, 2005

Reasons for Gratitude
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


Mention It

There is an anecdote about a little six-year-old girl named Kara.

Kara was going to a birthday party for one of her neighborhood friends. Her mother told her to remember, when she was leaving, to thank her hostess, Mrs. Brown.

Well, Kara came home from the birthday party and her mother asked if she had remembered to thank Mrs. Brown. The little girl replied, “No, I didn’t.

“You didn’t?” inquired her mother, very surprised at the omission.

“No,” replied Kara, “you see, the girl next to me thanked Mrs. Brown and she said, `Oh, don’t mention it.’ So, when my turn came, I didn’t mention it.”


Importance of Gratitude

Of course, Kara’s mother was absolutely correct.

It is important to say “thanks” to one another and to God for all we’ve received.

Way back around the year 1250 – over 700 years ago – a Catholic spiritual writer named Meister Eckart said: “If the only prayer you ever said was `Thank you,’ it would be enough.”

In today’s first reading, the Wisdom writer blesses and thanks God. He recognizes God’s many gifts to us.

In the second reading, St. Paul tells the people in Corinth that he thanks God for them. In doing that, he is thanking the people themselves for their faith and goodness.


Reasons for Gratitude

This evening I want to share with you four reasons why our giving thanks to God is so very important.

First, our giving thanks makes us aware of the gifts we have and how blessed we are. Theses gifts can be health, family, friends, opportunities or material comfort. The list is legion.

One spiritual writer says that gratitude is the key to happiness because we positively see all that we have as gift from God. In turn, gratitude helps us to fight negativity.

Sometimes it is so easy to dwell on what is going wrong or areas where we feel deprived. This kind of negativity can absorb a lot of our attention and energy, while gratitude opens us to the life and love of God.

Second, gratitude leads us away from a sense of entitlement. It is the opposite of feeling that we are simply owed so much in life and of taking life’s blessings for granted.

Might this have been the case with the nine lepers who did not return to offer thanks to Jesus? Maybe they just felt that they were somehow owed or entitled to being healed.

Third, besides helping us as individuals, gratitude also helps us as a community. This is why our American Thanksgiving Day is such an important for us as a nation.

It binds us together as one people in recognizing God’s blessings to us as a country. And spiritually, we would certainly say that gratitude forms us into the living body of Christ on this earth.

Fourth and last, giving thanks has a way of limiting our self-centeredness. When we are grateful, we tend to place less emphasis on material good and more emphasis on God as the basis of our happiness.

With that, gratitude increases our desire to share what we have. Our parish holiday food baskets, the food we bring for our two food pantries, the baking of casseroles are all clear signs of this.


Eucharist = Thanks

Let us make all these reasons for being grateful be the reason we have gathered this evening.

Let them be why specifically, we celebrate Eucharist this evening and not simply have a prayer service.

Actually, the very word Eucharist means “thanksgiving.”

The heart of this Sacrament is Jesus’ giving thanks to God and in being his Body in this community, it becomes our giving thanks as well.