By: Fr. Tony Hesse (Riverbend TEC)
I am always amazed at how Christmas is being advertised earlier and earlier every year. Advertisements and decorations are all over the place. Now don’t get me wrong, Christmas is a very special time of year and is one of my favorites. Sadly, Thanksgiving is being forgotten altogether. Although there is probably nothing we can do about it in the secular world, commercialism, and advertisements, we can control what happens in our hearts and homes.
On Thanksgiving Day, the Gospel from St. Luke reminds us of the importance of being grateful. After the nine lepers were cleansed, only one returned thanking God. Then, “Jesus said in reply, “‘Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?’ Then he said to him, ‘Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.’” This Gospel is a great reminder of thanking God for the blessings that we have received. God is always so good to us, but like the nine, we sometimes forget to thank Him. However, not only am I encouraging us to always be thankful for our blessings, but why not be thankful for His mercy?
Throughout Advent, our churches remind us of the importance of celebrating God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. As I mentioned earlier, God is so good to us and one of those areas is through His forgiveness. As is proclaimed in one of the Responsorial Psalm verses for Thanksgiving Day, “The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.” Although we talk about how God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, have we ever looked at these qualities in light of being grateful for them, especially the mercy one?
If God always wants to offer His mercy and share His forgiveness, one of the ways that we can show our appreciation for these gifts, is by celebrating them and seeking them out. In light of the Christmas Season, celebrating God’s mercy is kind of like getting a Christmas gift. If I were to give my dad a tie and saw that he would never wear it, I would be hurt. I would feel that he was not thankful for the gift because he is not using it and wearing it. I gave him the tie to be worn, not to be kept in the closet. So it is with God’s gift of mercy. I have a feeling that we, too, hurt God when we do not utilize His mercy and come seeking His forgiveness. Here He is, offering this great gift, and we are not celebrating it and asking for it. We just keep His mercy in the closet.
However, like the tie example, God wants us to be thankful for His mercy by fully participating and seeking His forgiveness. He wants us to come to Him and be reconciled by Him, because He has already come to us. Therefore, as we celebrate this Thanksgiving Season and prepare to celebrate Christmas this Advent, why not return to our Lord with thanksgiving by laying our burdens of sin before Him – by celebrating what God so freely and wonderfully has given us. God wants to free us of our leprosy of sin and wants no obstacle to get in the way of His great love.
With gratitude, may we welcome Him into our hearts all year round and not just at Christmas. Because the neat thing is, we know that through His mercy and love, He has already welcomed us in to His heart. And who knows? Perhaps, with the help of Christ, we will hear His words, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”
