On the eve of our national Thanksgiving holiday, I find myself musing about just how grateful I am and how important it is for us to dedicate ourselves to thankfulness. It is so easy to slip into a mode of complaint about what we do not have and to lose sight of all we have been given. Our focus can get skewed easily and with it, our attitude can become jaded. When we pay most of our attention to the material things in life, we become blinded to the true treasures that are available to us.

Cultivating a spirit of thanksgiving each and every day would have a transformative effect on us. Looking for the things in our lives for which we are grateful would leave us happier, more fulfilled, and create a deeper spirit of generosity in our hearts. Instead of focusing on our disappointments, imagine the light-heartedness that would flood our encounters with others if we embraced the good in our lives with a spirit of wonder and delight. So as we enter the Thanksgiving holiday, let us consider the reasons we have to be grateful.

Who are the people in our lives who love us, who have faith in us, who encourage and nurture us? Who challenges us to be our best selves, mentors us, and guides us on our journey of life? Who helps us to notice and correct self-defeating attitudes we may have? Who opens our eyes, ears and hearts to things of beauty and goodness that surround us? Who says to us: “You can.” when we whine, “I can’t.” They are reasons to be grateful.

What are the things in this world that inspire a sense of wonder in us? What in our world evokes a sense of awe: a sunset, a piece of music, a beautifully choreographed dance, a new-born child? What instills a spirit of hope, fulfillment and joy in us: a new day dawning, a project completed with a sense of accomplishment? These too are reasons to give thanks.

As if those people and things in our lives were not reason enough to be grateful, there is the ultimate gift in our lives: God. Think about what Fr. Thom suggested two weeks ago in his column: “God is calling us to a life of abundant joy.” Or, consider Rachel’s assertion last week that “God desperately wants to be involved in each of our lives.” God alone is reason enough for us to be grateful. God wants and does draw near to us. God is always with us, giving us what we need to live lives faithful to the gospel. God desires that we open our hearts to Him and that we embrace his desire that we be united with Him (John 17). Imagine that. God wants us to be one with Him.

We have so many reasons to be grateful. And, God is the source of them all. How can we thank God enough? (1 Th 3:9)

~Sister Kathleen

Take Your Next Step: Make a list of people or things for which you are grateful. Offer a prayer of thanks to God for them. Make an effort to thank someone for the gift they are to you. Once you have a list of concrete reasons to be thankful, each night reflect on the one person, circumstance, or event for which you are particularly grateful that day.

Listen to the incredible promise God is making to you this week: I myself will look after you. I will rescue you from every place where you were scattered when it was cloudy and dark. I myself will give you rest. I will seek you out when you are lost. I will bring you back when you stray. I will bind up your injuries and heal you when you are sick (paraphrased from Ezekiel 34). Can you imagine God looking after you? Not just other people in other places, but you, personally—God rescuing you, giving you rest, seeking you out when you are lost? It’s a pretty amazing promise. The only problem is that I think many of us often have a hard time believing that God is really making it to us. Maybe we believe in a general sense in a good God, a God who created the universe, even a God who loves us in sort of an abstract, theoretical way. But does each of us really believe that God wants to be intimately involved in my own real life—my own particular, unique, crazy, messy, painful, beautiful life? 

While each of us may struggle as individuals to believe this to be true of ourselves, this conviction lies at the heart of the Christian faith (and at the center of this Sunday’s feast, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe). Everything we do and believe together as a Church is built around the faith that the God who made the universe, who set the stars in motion, is also the God who so desperately wants to be involved in each of our lives that he chose to enter into our human condition, to pitch his tent among us in the Incarnation. The Incarnation of Christ is the ultimate expression of God’s love for us and desire to be involved in our lives.

Saint Ignatius suggests that to really get this, we should try to imagine God looking down at the world in the time just before the Incarnation. Looking at the world, God sees men and women, adults and children, rich and poor, weak and powerful, some being born, some dying, some laughing and some in tears, some feeding one another and some killing one another, so many people full of despair, so many people searching for love and for any sense of meaning in this world. Moved with love and compassion for each one of us, for our struggles and our pain and our search for meaning through all the darkness and confusion, God decides that there is only one thing to be done—God the Son must become human to save the whole world and everyone in it. God decides to break the power of evil and make all things new in Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. And so begins the greatest adventure story ever told.

This last Sunday of the liturgical year provides us with an opportunity to take stock of how we are doing, to reflect on God’s vision for the world, and to evaluate our own involvement in it. Next week the Church year begins again with Advent, when we prepare to celebrate the birth of the King. This week we proclaim who Christ is as King: a king who rules as a shepherd; who looks after and cares for the lost, the strayed, the injured; who is present in all the world’s hungry, naked, imprisoned, neglected, lonely, brokenhearted people. But here’s where it comes back to us. If Christ the King is going to have any kind of kingdom, then we have to build it. Like the King, we have to give ourselves away in concrete acts of love toward concrete people. But if we do, then we will hear the King say to us, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” That’s a pretty amazing promise, isn’t it?

~Rachel

Take Your Next Step:
Spend some time this week trying to see the world through God’s eyes. Try to imagine the love and compassion that God feels in looking on the world’s joys and sufferings, in seeing all the different ways people treat one another. How do you feel as you try to imagine the world through God’s eyes? Imagine how God feels in looking at the pain and struggles in your own life. Ask God to show you the concrete ways he is looking after you, rescuing you, seeking you out.

How do you measure your value as a human being? When we’re filling out an application for a job or for college, we might be asked about our skills, our talents, or the gifts we have that will help us to be successful in a job or a school. Before we even take the risk of applying, we might ask ourselves what we think we can do. High school students are sometimes asked to fill out questionnaires to help counselors and people writing recommendations to summarize their personal and academic strengths and weaknesses in an effort to present a “comprehensive” picture of the individual. Parents are asked to fill out a “brag sheet” to aid the process. The age at which we begin to evaluate ourselves in order to compete well in society gets younger and younger. You can buy your newborn a college t-shirt with their expected year of graduation.

I wonder what effect this constant state of being evaluated has on our lives. Of course it is good to take stock of our lives, celebrate our accomplishments, and reach for greater growth and achievement. But does striving for the competitive advantage in society tend to skew our values in a certain direction and away from others? Does our effort to create a picture of ourselves cause us to lose sight of the real person we are? The gospel this week suggests that we take a look at what real success might mean and how we might accomplish it.

The master in the story who goes away on a trip entrusts his huge fortune to three servants. He trusts them all and believes in their potential. Two of the servants, seemingly unconcerned about how much the others were given, take up the master’s mission, using what they have learned from him and imitating how he goes about his business. They have appropriated his values. They don’t say what they think about him, but their actions show their attitude.

The third servant, perhaps in response to the way he compares himself to the others, wants to have as little as possible to do with his master’s business. The gospel writer lets us know he thinks his master is a hard man who expects results. He is not sure he can deliver, so out of fear, motivated by self-protection, he avoids any risk and goes and buries what the master had invested in him. 

When the master returns, the first two servants can’t wait to show him the fruit of their labors, in effect saying that they had learned from him, and that by allowing them to share in his business venture, faithfully following his way of life, they had become more like him. They share his joy. Sadly, the third is stuck making excuses. He has not come to know his master, hasn’t appreciated what the master offers, and his fear has defined his destiny.

Friends, our God is calling us to a life of abundant joy. Does the “brag sheet” we keep on file in our minds really give the comprehensive picture of us that we want God to see? Does our concern about competing and being evaluated send us in the wrong direction, chasing after things that can never be the source of our joy? Do you sometimes think that you don’t have anything to offer to God? Does your fear of what others or God will think about you cause you to bury God’s investment in you, instead of taking the risks that enable it to grow? The good news is that it’s never too late to take that next step toward sharing the life that only God offers.

~Fr. Thom

Take Your Next Step: 
Take some time to think about how you evaluate yourself. Is it by achievements? What others think of you? How much money you make? The joy you bring to others? Think about what holds you back from taking the next step in growing in faith. What are you afraid of? Ask God to help you overcome your fear, and take one step out of your comfort zone this week. Maybe say hello to someone you’ve never met. Volunteer for something. Celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation (go to confession). Sing at Mass! Share your master’s joy.

What does it really mean to be disciples of Christ, and what motivates us to try? How do we live out the call to discipleship? Once we have embraced discipleship, what moves us to take the next step and become evangelizers? Without a doubt, we can benefit from asking these questions of ourselves now and again to test whether we have truly made inroads in our lifelong journey of faith.
We would do well to reflect on the fact that our starting point is that we have been loved by God first, and that experience of being loved unconditionally and without qualifying merit impels us to love in return. The gratuitous nature of God’s love for us is overwhelming, humbling, and motivating. God’s love, if we truly take it to heart, believe it, and live in the grace, the pure gift that it is, will transform us. That transformation will determine the choices we make in our lives.

Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, speaks of the challenge which the Gospel imposes on us and the consequences that flow from embracing it:
“The Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness.” (#88)

These words of Pope Francis hit home as they tell us not to insulate ourselves from our brothers and sisters, from their needs and brokenness. We cannot separate ourselves from becoming involved with them as individuals or as part of a community. The tenderness that God has extended to us, we in turn, must offer to others. For some of us, our next step in becoming disciples might mean that we do not avert our eyes from the beggar in the street; but rather, we recognize his dignity as a person by acknowledging his presence. For others, our deepening discipleship may involve our willingness to serve meals at a soup kitchen. For still others, the commitment to discipleship may be
recognized in concerted efforts to increase the numbers of transitional housing units available to homeless families.

Pope Francis tells us: “Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.” This means we can’t compartmentalize our life of faith and our daily lives. Our faith and the love that God extends to others through us must penetrate all aspects of our lives. The opportunities to bring the love of Christ to others are all around us. We only need to open our eyes to see them, our hearts to be moved by them, and then, direct our actions to respond to them. When asked why we do the things that we do, we can respond in an evangelizing manner in the words of Sr. Kathy Sherman (who has written a song with this title): “Because we love God.”

~Sr. Kathleen

Take Your Next Step: 
In the coming week, take notice of the poor who live in our midst, and in a time of prayer, ask God: What would you have me do? How do you want me to respond to this person’s need?