A Thanksgiving Reflection
Prior Daniel considers Eucharistic gratitude as a continuing practice of compassion, justice, and care for creation.
A number of years ago the author Aldous Huxley wrote: “Experience is not what happens to a person. It is what a person does with what happens to them.”
Meditating on the meaning of Thanksgiving Day certainly will conjure many memories in one’s life in America of the experiences that marked one’s life. For a Catholic the word thanksgiving is associated with the word Eucharist. Gratitude is a central meaning of many experiences that happen to one as the result the encounter of Eucharist from one’s first communion onwards in life. A life of humble gratitude is the result of the pervading real presence of Christ’s Eucharistic presence intimately woven in a person’s experience and indeed calls one to pay it forward in our relationships to others and indeed all of creation. Isaac of Nineveth in his Ascetic Treatises writes: “When God sees that in all purity of heart you are trusting in him more than in yourself. . .then a strength unknown to you will come and make its dwelling in you. And you will feel in all your senses the power of him who is with you.” Eucharist is the gift that has been given to bring this about within us and all of creation. The attitude of thanksgiving is to shape constantly an environment where compassion, justice render peace and joy in humble collaboration to keep callousness and cynicism from over coming us. Eucharist is a creative activity rendering one as a new creation in God’s future becoming our today. Thanksgiving Day can be yet another opportunity to begin anew with what happens to us as we enter in to it this year of 2024. “ The visible is the invisible written down. The Word, which produces, develops and attracts to itself every creature, is both silent and self-revelatory in it. It is silent in the negligence and greed of humanity. It is revelatory when humanity ‘names’ living things, like a poet on fire with love.” ( Olivier Clement, Roots of Christian Mysticism)
On behalf of our Camaldolese Monastic community and Oblates here at Monastery of the Risen Christ we pray you have Thanksgiving Day that renews your family and friends in hope.