November 24, 2005
“How did Thanksgiving Day come to be?”
We all learned in first grade that Thanksgiving was first celebrated by the Pilgrims and Indians to give thanks for the abundant harvests of the land. It only seems right that gratitude should be expressed where God’s Providence is so evident.
Perhaps most of us did not learn in first grade this most curious historical fact: that the elevation of Thanksgiving to a national holiday did not take place until 1863. America was entrenched in the bloodiest war of its history and President Lincoln called for a national day of thanksgiving. Why then? What sense does it make to give thanks as we’re burying our sons and brothers and taking up arms against our neighbors?
Lincoln said in an address around that time:
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
In our own lives we are often confronted with suffering. Sometimes it may be obvious to us, as it was to Lincoln, that the Lord is making provisions for us to atone for the sins of our past. Sometimes our suffering is (as Saint Paul warns us) the rotten harvest we reap from having sown our seed in the field of the flesh. And in these cases, difficult as it may be, we should praise and thank God for His judgments, which are “true and righteous altogether.” We should thank Him for His mercy in allowing us to make amends.
But then there are times when our suffering seems unjust, undeserved. Times when we say, with Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And often times that suffering really is inexplicable according to the limited scope of our knowledge and logic. How can we give thanks in this kind of darkness?
By the grace of Hope, we must not allow our hearts to rest in the brokenness of this present world, but set them in the light and joy of our heavenly destination while we still sojourn in this dark valley of tears. By the grace of Faith, we must strive to trust God so completely that we believe that even in this present darkness, He is using our suffering to bring light to the world, just as He used the suffering of His only begotten Son to bring the light of redemption to the world.
Do something radical this Thanksgiving Day. Make a profound act of faith and hope and thank God for your suffering!
May the Lord give you His Peace,
Br. Dismas Marie Kline, CFR
Most Blessed Sacrament Friary, Newark, New Jersey
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