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Sts. Joseph & Paul Catholic Church |
Homily Archives | |
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Thanksgiving Homily – 2007 It is a familiar story. Ten lepers, standing at a distance, see Jesus enter their village. They desire to be healed, and so they call out to Jesus, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” Jesus recognizes their need for healing and tells them to go to see the priest. As they go on their way, they are healed. One, a Samaritan, seeing that he has been healed, is overjoyed; his heart is filled with gratitude, so much so that he goes back, falls at the feet of Jesus, and say thanks. “Thank you Jesus for healing me.” On seeing him, Jesus says, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?” My priest friend, Fr. Tom, is pastor at a Newman University Parish in Stevens Point, WI. Some of you will remember that he visited here during Lent of this year. He brought a group of his students to Kentucky for an Alternative Spring Break in Eastern Kentucky, and they stopped here enroute for an overnight stay. A few years back, Fr. Tom began what I will call a “Thank You” campaign at his parish on the University Campus. He engaged in this campaign because he observed that many of his students did not say thank you. Not only did they fail to say thank you for simple things that people did for them, but also they did not write thank you notes when someone did something really nice for them, like take them to dinner or give them a gift. Fr. Tom began his “Thank You” campaign by preaching on the topic. He preached on the simplicity of the words “thank you;” he preached on appropriate times to say thank you; he preached that saying thank you is not only about the person to whom you say it, but it reveals something about the person who says thanks because saying thank you reflects gratitude and humility.
After Mass, he made
blank thank you notes, in packages of ten, available to the students. He
invited the students to take the cards and, whenever someone did something
nice for them, to write a thank you no If you will, those of us here today are that one leper who came back to say thanks to Jesus for the healing, the love, and the goodness that he has shared with us through His love. On this Thanksgiving Day, I do not have any thank you notes for you to take after Mass. However, I encourage everyone to use the simple words, “thank you,” as a part of our Christian vocabulary. Say thank you when someone does something nice for you. Say thank you when another gives you a gift. Say thank you so that you might show your gratitude and feel the humility that is God. Later in this Thanksgiving Day, many of us will gather around Thanksgiving tables to share in the bounty of the earth’s fruits. As you share in the ritual of that food, pause for a moment to say thank you to God for all the wonders of his unconditional love. But before we disperse to those many tables in the domestic church, let us move our mind and our hearts to this Eucharistic Table and celebrate in the ritual action of the Eucharist… the ultimate Thanksgiving to God.
sdrose@bellsouth.net |
te
as a sign of their gratitude.