Thanksgiving

“Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.” -1 Chronicles 16:34

Today our country celebrates the holiday of Thanksgiving. Its origins lie in the early Christian settlers coming to this continent hundreds of years ago. We portrayed it every year in elementary school by dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians so that the story would always be fixed in our heads. We should take this holiday as an opportunity for thanking God for all that He has done.

In Church, for any liturgical gathering, we always begin with the Thanksgiving Prayer which starts off with, “Let us give thanks to the Beneficent and Merciful God.” And why is it that we give thanks to the Lord, because He has “covered us, helped us, guarded us, accepted us unto Him, spared us, supported us, and brought us to this hour.” But we are supposed to also thank Him, “for every condition, concerning every condition, and in every condition” for these very same reasons and we must always remember that He gave us our life, both physical and spiritual, the greatest gift. So why is it that because of one or two things we shouldn’t thank him for the rest of the innumerable things he has done for us. We should thank Him for everything and every condition.

Thanksgiving glorifies God and causes us to come closer to Him. In this sense it is also a witness to God, because when people see that we actually live by what we preach it receives much more magnification and realization than just preaching principles. Thanksgiving should therefore also be an act of love. It should be a very high expression of that love, showing God that we appreciate what He is doing and that we are humbled by these experiences. As it is written that if it, “have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Love is “that which is perfect” (1 Corinthians 13:10), and we must never forget that.

The Greek word for thanksgiving as used in the Bible is “eucharistos.” This then points us back to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is called so because before Jesus broke the bread and gave it to His disciples as His Body and gave them the cup of wine as His Blood giving the New Covenant, it says He gave thanks. Jesus giving Himself for us on the Cross and the Sacrament is our ultimate Thanksgiving that He has been merciful to us in His goodness as to give us eternal life and fellowship with Him, which is why in the Church’s hymns we say the verse, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever” (1 Chronicles 16:34) so often.

So let us be like St. Paul and say with such conviction, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15)

Happy Thanksgiving and Glory be to God both now and ever and unto the age of all ages. Amen.