As we prepare for the Thanksgiving Day celebrations and the blessing surrounding us, we also place ourselves in the understanding of the foundation of all “Thanksgiving” in our Eucharistic life of blessing and thanking God for his goodness. Bishop Fulton Sheen shares these words of wisdom, “Every moment brings us more treasures than we can gather. The great value of the Now, spiritually viewed, is that it carries a message God has directed personally to us…Nothing is more individually tailored to our spiritual needs than the Now moment; for that reason it is an occasion of knowledge that can come to no one else. This moment is my school, my textbook, my lesson.” (p 210-11, “Lift Up Your Heart” by Fulton J. Sheen)
Each day, as part of my morning prayer, I offer a prayer of thanksgiving remembering the “Now” moment and recalling the blessing given that I am called to share.

Thank you for my very existence: What more basic prayer can we offer. When I awake I thank God for my life, the moment I can breathe another breath to serve God again this day. It is the most fundamental thanks we can give because without this nothing else is possible, nothing else is fruitful, nothing else is or can be.

2. Thank you for my health: we each carry our own burdens of health. Even the person who looks healthy suffers from the slow gravity of age as our body wears down. It is the inevitable movement from the earthly to the heavenly. Even with the aches and pains of life we are thankful for our ability to serve in prayer and works of mercy.

3. Thank you for my parents and family: (I add in my Bishop, brother priests and deacons) Yes, family can be hard at times. Yes, family can be a burden at times. But the gift of family, parents, brothers, sisters and the greater circle invite us into an eternal relationship stretching back and forth from past to future, seeing and sharing in new birth and life and the ultimate moments of death. It is where the sacrifices of love play out in the intimate joys and sorrows shared in the thankful for gift of love.

4. Thank you for my will: My choice to love and serve in joy is an act of the will. It is the gift of free-will God has blessed each man and woman with since creation. The “Now” moment Bishop Sheen shares calls us to choose good over evil, service over the selfish, and graciousness over greed.We are called through the will of the Father, to be a son, a daughter of hope and love offering all that I have in thanksgiving.

5 Thank you for my body: As a Catholic priest, this prayer of thanks centers around the words of institution I pray each Mass, “This is my Body, Which will be given up for you.” I turn my bodily desires back to the glory of God in the sacrificial offering of love. The fragile vessel of our body becomes the foundation for holiness in our call to serve in mercy and love.

6. Thank you for my soul: It is my thanks for the gift of hope, what we do here and “Now” is the call to be God-like in our love that can never be destroyed in death. What we do matters, not just in moment but in the eternal plan God has for each of us.

7. Thank you for my talent: As meager as they may be, each talent serves God’s holy purpose in my life. When we deny any talent, any gift, any blessing from God because it may seem difficult, we begin to deny the basic talent of taking up “my” cross and following him.

8. Thank you for everything: Recalling moments of grace each day and bringing them to God remembering they are his already.

9. Thank you for Mary: I recall, Mary is a woman of thanks. In her great fiat, the “yes” to the eternal, she echoed the eternal thanks of life entrusting all to God. It is an example that as I pray Rosary each day I hear in the Angel greeting Mary “Hail full of grace, The Lord is with you.” Trusting in thanksgiving this is the greeting God wishes us all to hear and receive.

10. Thank you for Jesus: “My Lord and my God” is the prayer spoken by St. Thomas that reverberates in my heart. It is the ultimate thanks because without Him, nothing else has meaning and hope and all we do dissolves into dust. Our prayer of thanksgiving is seeking to share Jesus’ life with others each and every moment. And we can only do this when we give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and may God bless you and keep you always in Love.

Fr. Mark