{"id":8388,"date":"2002-11-27T17:39:21","date_gmt":"2002-11-27T22:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2002\/11\/27\/thanksgiving-eucharist\/"},"modified":"2016-11-24T12:42:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-24T17:42:08","slug":"thanksgiving-eucharist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2002\/11\/thanksgiving-eucharist\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving = Eucharist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giving thanks to\u00a0the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in\u00a0light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to\u00a0the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of\u00a0sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for\u00a0in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,\u00a0whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities \u2013 all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things\u00a0hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the\u00a0first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him\u00a0all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to\u00a0himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of\u00a0his cross. \u2013Colossians 1:12\u201320<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today I am thankful that I can be\u00a0thankful.<\/p>\n

On the Easter Vigil where I came into Holy Mother Church I\u00a0reflected on the fact that I had literally spent forty years in the wilderness.\u00a0I had been chasing after false gods and idols and was totally oblivious to the\u00a0miracles that God had created around me. I would have fit in easily with the\u00a0hardheaded Israelites, ignoring every blessing and focusing on even the most\u00a0trite inconvenience. I was suffering from spiritual autism, locked into only the\u00a0material world and undiscerning of the spiritual world around me. I did not\u00a0realize that I was afflicted with this eternal life threatening illness, nor did\u00a0those around me inform me of my malady. After reading Franks Sheed\u2019s awesome\u00a0book\u00a0Theology and Sanity I came to see my insanity for what it was.\u00a0As an atheist the concept of thanksgiving was alien to me, I knew I should be\u00a0thankful but to whom was I to be thankful to? It is difficult to give thanks to\u00a0random eddies of atoms coalescencing into a cell. Oh chaos I thank you for we\u00a0are wonderfully made just doesn\u2019t sound right. How can you be thankful for your\u00a0flukeness, your undesigned accidental existence. Luckily, as most atheists I did\u00a0not dwell too much on the actual meaning of these unbeliefs. Thank you God for\u00a0bringing me into the promised land of your Church.<\/p>\n

This morning I had my\u00a0true Thanksgiving feast, I went to Mass and thanked God for everything he has\u00a0done, which is literally everything and my wife and I and millions of people\u00a0around the world received Him Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the\u00a0Eucharist.<\/p>\n

I also realized today that if the Book of Exodus described my\u00a0first forty years in the wilderness then my autobiography has also already been\u00a0written in the Book of Judges. I follow God and I fall down, I follow God and I\u00a0fall down, I follow God and I fall down, and lets not forget the part where I\u00a0follow God and I fall down. I think it was Father Rutler who talked about that\u00a0if he had his way, that in the Stations of the Cross after Jesus falls down; he\u00a0would add and he got up again. May I continuously also always get up\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

Following along with Bible books that describe my life, I hope\u00a0that my epitaph might follow along the lines of:<\/p>\n

I\u00a0have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.\u00a0Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord,\u00a0the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also\u00a0to all who have loved his appearing. \u2013 2nd Timothy 4:7\u20138<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0related story of Eucharistic thanksgiving the latest issue of my diocesan\u00a0magazine the St. Augustine\u00a0Catholic has an article about a pre-puritan Catholic Thanksgiving in\u00a0Florida.<\/p>\n

When on September 8, 1565 Pedro Menendez de\u00a0Aviles and his 800 Spanish settlers founded the settlement of St. Augustine in\u00a0La Florida, the landing party celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving, and, afterward,\u00a0Menendez laid out a meal to which he invited as guests the native Seloy tribe\u00a0who occupied the site. The celebrant of the Mass was St. Augustine\u2019s first\u00a0pastor, Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, and the feast day in the\u00a0church calendar was that of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What\u00a0exactly the Seloy natives thought of those strange liturgical proceedings we do\u00a0not know, except that, in his personal chronicle, Father Lopez wrote that the\u00a0Indians imitated all they saw done.<\/p>\n

\u2026The\u00a0newsman told me that all of Massachusetts was \u00a0freaked out, and that, as he\u00a0spoke, the Selectmen of Plymouth are holding an emergency meeting to contend\u00a0with this new information that there were Spaniards in Florida before there were\u00a0Englishmen in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

I replied,\u00a0Fine. And you can tell them for me that, by the time the Pilgrims came to\u00a0Plymouth, St. Augustine was up for urban renewal.<\/p>\n

In closing I give thanks for creation, redemption, salvation, the\u00a0Incarnation, sanctification, supplication, conversion, vicarious atonement,\u00a0meaning to suffering, the seven sacraments – especially forgiveness of sin,\u00a0beauty, truth, justice, mercy, Carmelite spirituality, and the relentless love\u00a0that God has for us.<\/p>\n

For my wife and children, mother, father, brother,\u00a0aunts, uncles, grandmothers and friends. For the Saints, Priests and Bishop of\u00a0my diocese, and our Holy Father John Paul II. For music, reading, laughter, the\u00a0five senses, and job satisfaction. For snow as a kid but not having to contend\u00a0with it now. I also give thanks for the thousands of things that I have left\u00a0out.<\/p>\n

I also give thanks to blog writers, my blog readers, my blog commenters, and\u00a0those who have blogrolled me or linked to me.<\/p>\n

I wish you and your\u00a0families a Happy Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giving thanks to\u00a0the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in\u00a0light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to\u00a0the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8388"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15637,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8388\/revisions\/15637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}