Thanksgiving and disaster

Masses on Thanksgiving Day can use a number of different Scripture readings with the specific theme of giving thanks to God. It is easy to make good comments about Thanksgiving based on those readings.

The readings for this particular day in the Liturgical calendar are a bit different.

In the first reading (Daniel 6:12-28), a man is seized by the government just for praying privately in his home and sentenced to death.

In the Gospel (Luke 21:20-28), our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ foretells terrible calamities in vivid detail.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

But seriously, Thanksgiving is not a time simply to attempt recreations of Norman Rockwell moments of familial bliss.

It is a day to give thanks to God for the good things we have, for the bad things we have been spared, and for the strength God has given us to endure.

That was the context of the first Thanksgiving Day: celebrated by people who had been blessed with good things but also who had endured much hardship and whose future security was not assured.

Yet they gave thanks.

So also must we.

Thanks be to Thee, O Lord.