Eucharistia: Thanksgiving

The countdown is on… we are officially 5 days away from Thanksgiving!!  It’s one of my favorite holidays because there is no pressure, except for remembering to take my toddler-sized turkey out of the freezer.  

Thanksgiving is a low-key, relaxing holiday.

Christmas is probably my favorite, but after stewing in Christmas lights and gift wrapping for an entire month, I have reached the end of a marathon and come tripping across, looking pretty haggard when I show up to Christmas morning Mass!

Easter is so lovely from a liturgical standpoint and is arguably the MOST important, but I have such bad emotional and mental whiplash from spending time meditating on the passion that it’s hard not to overindulge in chocolate, knowing the tremendous sacrifice Jesus made for me!  But I do my part and still manage to eat my body weight in Cadbury eggs.

Thanksgiving creeps up on us!  Sure, there are signs that it is coming… I fed my droopy pumpkins to the chickens this past week and threw my dead mums in the dumpster.  But it quietly ascends and kickstarts over a month of chaos.  From Black Friday shopping to holiday baking get-togethers, to office parties, to Christmas programs, and everything else in between, there is no quiet, peaceful Advent.

If you have spent some time here in the past, you know I say a lot of this in jest and fully appreciate the spiritual miracles of the Incarnation at Christmas and the Paschal Mystery we celebrate during the Easter Triduum.  

We actively participate in the liturgies of Holy Week, and do actually try to keep Advent sacred, although we ended up with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree one year because I refused to let us get a tree until a few days before Christmas, and it was the last tree left on the lot… 

Yet here I come back to Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is actually a secular holiday, but as Catholics, we also cherish it for its spiritual symbolism!

The word Eucharist comes from the Greek term Eucharistia, meaning “thanksgiving.”

As kids, we did chores on Thanksgiving morning, rushed to get cleaned up, ran out the door for mass, then headed to my grandparents' house for a great feast.

Now that I host Thanksgiving, I take my family to the vigil mass the night before.  Then, Adam and whoever is brave enough to help, butter up and aggressively season and stuff the bird before it spends all night slowly roasting in the oven. 

The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith.  At the Last Supper, Jesus gave thanks over the bread and wine.  This was not an incidental act of gratitude.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith.

The mass re-presents the Paschal Mystery, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as a sacrificial offering to the Father, where we, the Church, join in praising God for His boundless mercy.

Our attendance at Mass immerses us into communal thanksgiving- the whole Church, as one body, glorifying God and refining our faith through shared worship!

Through this lens, we get to celebrate these amazing holidays every time we go to Mass! 

We celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation each time the priest raises the host high into the air, and acting in persona Christi, pronounces, “This is my body.”  Under the consecration of the bread and wine, Christ Himself becomes present under those species.  Here we can sing with the angels to the shepherds that first Christmas morning, “Glory to God in the Highest!”  He has come!

We celebrate the Paschal Mystery as the life, death, resurrection, and glory of Jesus are woven into the very structure of the Mass.

And participating in the Mass itself is the highest form of thanksgiving we can offer for the profound mysteries of our faith.

So if you are like me and like to party, head to Mass as often as you can!  You get to celebrate Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving every single time.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Until next time, your sister in Christ,

Leah