A Blessed Thanksgiving to our
American followers! In celebration of this day of gratitude, please reflect
with us on these words of thanksgiving preached by Saint John Paul II:
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God!
These words we take from the very heart of the Eucharistic
liturgy. Eucharist means thanksgiving. Today, as we meet around this altar, our
first desire is to give thanks. …In this way we wish to express what is the
most characteristic element of the Eucharistic liturgy.
Our sacrifice and our prayer in union with the Sacrifice of
Jesus Christ - in the sacramental identification with him - is above all a
great act of thanksgiving by the Church.
...We thank God for his existence: for the fact that he is
God, for his Godhead, for his omnipotence and holiness, for his truth and love,
for his eternal plan for the salvation of man and the world.
We thank the Father for the Son and the Holy Spirit. We
thank the Son for the Father. We thank the Holy Spirit because through the love
of the Father and the Son he is the uncreated Gift: the source of all the gifts
of created grace.
The Apostle Paul writes: “This is what I pray, kneeling
before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes
its name: Out of his infinite glory may he give you the power through his
Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong” (Eph. 3:14-16).
Man looks into his own heart, into “the hidden self,” and he
offers up thanksgiving to the very mystery of the Godhead. For he, man, has
been created “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26), and he is now called for this reason to give
particular thanksgiving. We give thanks to God for the fact that he is God in
whom is found the eternal Model of our human essence. We thank him for the
Godhead, for the inscrutable mystery of the Trinity, for the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit.
