Abbey News – Week of December 7

This week I know many of us will gather with family or friends to share a meal, watch a parade, cheer on a favorite football team… Offices will close, kitchens will warm, and the first, furtive Christmas songs will wend their way over the radio. But whatever your Thanksgiving plans, I hope your day is full of warmth, joy, and light.

After all, Thanksgiving may not be a liturgical holiday, but it offers a festive chance to exercise that most joyful and necessary response to God’s gifts: lifting up our grateful hearts! It’s a response we recognize at Mass, that greatest feast of thanksgiving, when we acknowledge “our duty and our salvation” to thank God always. And it’s a response that feeds the very root of peace and joy throughout our lives, even – or especially – at times of difficulty and darkness. Few gifts are greater than the opportunity to express gratitude, for and with our loved ones, to the God who loves us with such infinite tenderness.

I know, of course, that Thanksgiving Day can also present challenges. For some of us, large family gatherings can raise tensions or open old wounds. For others, loneliness or hardship become a heavier than usual cross. And even for those looking forward to visits and cheerful activities, the hubbub of preparation and the frenzied rush so quick to take over this time of year can blur us out of the present, even though the present is the only place we find God and experience His love.

So, with an eye to the joys and the perils of Thursday – and to every day in which we thank God for the gift of life and love and breath – I wanted to share a quote from St. Catherine of Siena, something one of our beloved Abbey monks, Br. Edward Mancuso, shared with me when he knew I needed to hear it: “To the servant of God, every place is the right place, and every time is the right time.”

It’s something I tend to forget, equally in the face of holiday excitement or “ordinary” monotony. And it’s something to which both Benedictine stability and gratitude itself bear quiet witness. Every place is the right place, and every time is the right time. Because God is there.

As I’m writing this, as you’re reading it, as each of us moves through our day, moment to moment, God is here. There are no “filler” passages in the stories of our lives. Every day is a thanksgiving feast because the root of our hope and our gratitude lies not just in knowing that God sends us gifts, but even more that He bears them personally into our lives and makes every moment a place to encounter Him, the Giver.

We may not always see it, but if we abandon ourselves to His will, which is Love, there are no times or places without meaning. Our resting, our work, our play, our projects, our interruptions, even our periods of waiting – we can live them all in Him, in gratitude that nothing we do or say escapes the redeeming beauty of a significance far beyond what we could hope or invent. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are closer to us than we are to ourselves.

We don’t have to wait for a sign or a holiday. Gratitude acts by lifting up our hearts to the God who is always with us, who makes us co-creators with Himself and fills our lives with meaning: with Love that isn’t constrained by our weakness or our limited vision. Let’s thank God that every place is the right place, and every time is the right time. And let’s allow the joy of this to fill our celebrations and continue through eternity.

God bless you this Thanksgiving!