Thanksgiving: Our Sweet Duty, Joy and Salvation
At every Mass, one of the most significant dialogues in human life occurs. The priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” The faithful respond, “It is right and just.” And the priest replies with a saying of great theological depth: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, Holy Father, almighty and ever-living God.”
It’s fitting to give God thanks, “always and everywhere.” It’s appropriate for us to do so on sunny days or rainy ones, when we feel like a million bucks and or are in the hospital, when we’re attending weddings of loved ones or their funerals, when we get promotions at work or pink slips, when we win or when we get routed.
It’s right and just to thank God at all times and places because everything that happens — both what the world considers adverse or propitious — God either wills or allows, seeking to bring spiritual good out of each (Romans 8:28). Our salvation, we boldly proclaim, rests on our gratitude, which opens us up to receive God’s grace. Thanking God in response to all he has done, therefore, is our sweet duty.
These are thoughts that should influence Americans every November as we observe the national celebration of Thanksgiving. These are also thoughts that must characterize the Eucharistic Revival.
The Mass is a school of Thanksgiving, where we are trained to give thanks to God always and everywhere as the right thing to do, as a duty of justice, and as the path to salvation.
It’s highly significant that when the first Christians described what they were doing as they convened to “do this in memory” of the Lord, they didn’t call it the celebration of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus. They didn’t name it the Feast of the Lord’s Supper, the Banquet of the Lamb, the sacred synaxis or several other alternatives that would have been theologically appropriate. They called it, rather, the Eucharist, from the Greek word eucharistia, which means “to give thanks” or “thanksgiving.”
Every time they came together for Mass, it was, in effect, Thanksgiving Day. It was Thanksgiving during the times of growth and peace. It was Thanksgiving during the times of persecution. Their fundamental approach to the Mass was that it was the greatest way possible for them to thank God for the gift of life, for so many blessings of family and friends, for the gift of the Christian faith and the new life received in baptism, for the gift of salvation, and even for the crosses God permitted.
They recognized that, in the Mass, they were entering into Jesus’ own prayer of thanksgiving to the Father.
