for November 26
Thanksgiving

It doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving. 2020 feels more like “no, thanks.” It has been a year of bad things happening, not just to good people and not just in Philadelphia, but to everyone, all over the world.

There is, of course, the toll of COVID-19: catastrophic loss of life and health and livelihood. Even those of us who have been merely inconvenienced and irritated are exhausted. There has been unprecedented destruction of entire regions and communities from wildfires and hurricanes spawned by decades of damage done to the earth. Unwarranted police killings of Black Americans reveal pernicious and deep-rooted racism. Rancorous politics have raged unabated from January’s impeachment hearings to the recent election. And these, of course, just the top news stories, just the headlines. 

Underneath all of that are the truths so often omitted from the holiday that we aren’t celebrating in the usual ways. We tend to look away from the brutal backstory of colonizing what would become the United States. Images of harvest celebrations and parades and family gatherings crowd out remembrance of the destruction of lives and ways of life, leaving little space for mourning and righteous anger.

There are so many reasons in 2020 to feel like just saying “No thanks.” But even so, saying thanks remains persistently ubiquitous in our daily lives.

We still say thanks when a retail clerk hands over change or a receipt. We say thanks when someone props open a door for us, albeit with an outstretched elbow or foot. Maybe more than usual—because we are spending so much time together at home—we coach young children in saying the magic words “please” and “thank you.” And people will probably never stop saying “oh thank God” when they slam on the brakes in the nick of time, or find the missing wallet or keys or child.

All of these unreflected-upon “thanks” contain at their heart an acknowledgment that we are not alone. Even when we just mumble, our day-to-day thanks recognize the countless ways that we need all kinds of people around us all the time in so many ways. We are not sufficient unto ourselves. Thanks are like the spider’s silken thread that ties together and anchors the web of human community.

Giving thanks is also a sacred thread woven through our common prayer. We begin each Eucharist with the call to give thanks always and everywhere for the gifts we have received—gifts that we are about to offer back to God. As the priest prays over the bread and wine, we recall that Jesus gave thanks at his last meal with his disciples, before giving his life for us. And the very last words we say at Mass are “Thanks be to God;” a closing acknowledgment that all we have is a gift from God.

More than a feeling of gratitude, more than the words we say, thanks is something we do, a practice we cultivate, a habit of life. We take what we have received and we give it away in turn. When we receive the presence of Christ, we are to take it out into the world and give it away. Each celebration of the Eucharist reminds us that we can bring life where death looms, we can offer hope where there is despair and we can work for reconciliation where memories are painful—precisely because we do not give anything that we haven’t already received from God.

All the reasons that we may feel like saying “no thanks” to this year are not to be denied. But let them not keep us from choosing to say thanks anyway–for each small act of kindness, for the ways that we bless each other’s lives, for the love of God that draws us—slowly perhaps, but surely—from death to life.
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website.