Father Christopher Zugger

Often at Thanksgiving tables in America, people are asked “what are you thankful for?” This can be an exercise in futility on the part of the person who poses the question. Sometimes the answer consists of “Uh …”. Or the answer can be “Dinner today.”

We are supposed to be a thankful, grateful people. The heart of a Byzantine Catholic or Orthodox Christian should be formed by the Divine Liturgy above all else, as it is in this worship of God, when Christ descends into the bread and wine and transforms the very substance into His Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity through the power of the Holy Spirit. When the priest reads the start of the Eucharistic Prayer, the Anaphora, what does he begin with? Thanks. “For all this we give thanks to You, and to Your only-begotten Son, and to Your Holy Spirit” – that is what Saint John Chrysostom chose to begin with. The Greek word for what we do  here, Eucharist, means to give thanks. When we stop on Thanksgiving Day to give thanks, the first thing that we as Catholics should give thanks for is the privilege of being able to celebrate the Eucharist, to receive the Eucharist, to attend the Eucharistic celebration, to behold the Eucharist, to pray in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Reserved Eucharist inside the tabernacle, to know and believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ.

If we do not make the Eucharist our focus of daily life, of our deepest hunger, then we are failing in our mission as baptized members of the Holy Trinity. Vatican II teaches that the Eucharist is both the source and summit of the Christian life. How can that happen? Pope Pius XII wrote that when the liturgy is being offered, “While we stand before the altar … it is our duty so to transform our hearts that every trace of sin may be completely blotted out, while whatever promotes supernatural life through Christ, may be zealously fostered and strengthened even to the extent that, in union with the Immaculate Victim, we become a victim acceptable to the Eternal Father.” 

That is how we make the Divine Liturgy, this holy sacrifice, the source of our spiritual lives, and how we make it the summit of our daily lives. This service of thanksgiving calls us to be converted, to be convicted in our hearts that we are on a journey of transformation and constant conversion, and that we unite ourselves personally with Jesus.

And sometimes a guest or family member might decide to be the resident philosopher and ask “What is there really to be thankful for? Look at the mess that the world is in.” The world is indeed a mess – but here’s a revelation. The world is always a mess. Bad things will keep on happening – and a lot of the immoral or vicious things, like wars or invasions, slavery, abortion throughout pregnancy, and other forms of violence and abuse. Why? The modern, advanced world claims to have solutions – but it wants to eliminate suffering usually through more violence. Political or military or cult leaders claim to have solutions to make a better world that too often end up in tragedy, from communism to Nazism to civil wars. Why isn’t the world a better place yet?

Father Walter Ciszek was in Soviet prisons and labor camps from 1941 to 1955, and then kept in exile until 1963, far from his family in America. In pondering why there was so much evil not just in the Soviet Union but the world, he wrote later that so much hatred, immorality, persecution of religion, violence, and denial of God – all things that we see now – exist precisely because of the failure of people to accept divine grace and so do the will of God. If Christians fail to transform the world, no wonder it remains a mess. Jesus told us “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

Father Ciszek was constantly inspired by the faith of the people he served in the labor camps and in exile. He wrote “Their faith, their courage, inspired me daily to offer up all my actions and works and sufferings of each day to spread the Kingdom of God upon earth. … One thing we could do and do daily: we could seek first the kingdom of God and his justice – first of all in our own lives, and then in the lives of those around us.”

We are fed by Holy Communion, consecrated in the Liturgy and reserved in this tabernacle. We are able to rest each night in the arms of God the Father. We are able to look to the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our patroness of this parish; to the witness of the past martyrs like Romzha and Gojdich and Hopko and Oros; to the witness of holy people we’ve known in our own daily lives. We can seek first the kingdom of God and so bring grace and peace to the world around us. We can be thankful on Thanksgiving, but we must be thankful every day for the constant outpouring of God’s love into our hearts and then we must act on it so as to hasten the coming of God’s kingdom in this messy world of ours.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving Day, and above all, may our parish grow in holiness through our commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ.