Even though Thanksgiving Day is a secular, not a religious, holiday it has a special resonance for Catholics. After all, the central prayer of the Church is Thanksgiving (which is how you translate Eucharist.) In our prayer today it is good to give thanks for blessings received like the leper who was healed by Jesus. The reality is that there isn’t anything we haven’t received, it is all a gift. Which might explain why over the centuries the Church developed the custom of celebrating the Eucharist, the Thanksgiving, every day. In the earliest days of the Church the Eucharist was only celebrated on Sunday as a point of encounter with Jesus’ triumph over sin and death at the Resurrection. But daily Eucharist reminds us that not every day is a triumph, that some days are a slog. Daily Eucharist challenges us to give thanks for things we would not immediately think to be grateful for. When Thomas More was emprisoned by Henry VIII he wrote a letter to his daughter, Margaret. “God’s grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing so His Majesty hs done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me, I count my imprisonment the very greatest.” More found in a seemingly negative thing, going to prison, that God was present to him in a deeper way than before. He can bless God for jail. He goes on to say that he hopes that the king will release him but even if he does not “I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.” Yes, the leper was grateful he was cured but there were many lepers who weren’t cured. Can they be grateful? We give thanks if we win the lottery or get good news from the doctor or find this world to be a little gentler. The challenge for us is to be grateful for whatever life dishes out to us because of our trust that the God who has brought us this far by faith is not about to leave us now.
