Homily for Thanksgiving Day

Homily for Thanksgiving Day

Nov. 23, 2023
Ps 138: 1-5
Mark 5: 18-20
1 Cor 1: 3-9
Is 63: 7-9
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart” (Ps 138: 1).

That’s the theme of the day, of course:  we thank God for all his blessings—blessings given to us individually, to our country, to our religious families.  We might start to enumerate them, but we couldn’t finish the count.

We may not have had a demon cast out of us like the unnamed man in the gospel (Mark 5:18), but we are grateful that our Lord Jesus has released us from the devil’s grip and restored us to fellowship with God—a release and a restoration he continually renews, given our spiritual weakness and his bountiful mercy.

Paul thanks God “for the grace of God bestowed” on Jesus’ followers, which enriches us “in every way” (1 Cor 1:5).  Well, not in a material sense, for grace can’t be measured.  Rather, we “lack no spiritual gift” (1:7).  He supplies whatever we need to be “firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ (1:8).  So much for which to be grateful, to “sing of the ways of the Lord” (Ps 138:5), to pray that we may respond every day to “his great kindness” (Is 63:7), and to “announce to [the world] all that the Lord has done for” us (Mark 5:19) and continues to do “according to his great mercy” (Is 63:7).

Our Eucharist is our thanks to God for the “fellowship with his Son” (1 Cor 1:9) that’s extended to us.  We go forth from the Eucharist to extend our gratitude by offering fellowship, love, and mercy to one another:  to our brothers, our staff, our families, and all whose lives we have the grace to touch.

Art: David the Psalmist (St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church, Fredericksburg, Va.)