A Thanksgiving Resolution

It turns out, I couldn't help myself. I felt compelled to share some small, interesting quote. Here are the thoughts of the editor of the Chicago Daily Tribune for Thanksgiving, 1880:

So there should be abundant good cheer and joy to-day as the reunited families once more come together around the festive board, converging from distant points and for one day forgetting the cares and anxieties of the world int he renewal of old associations and the coming closer together by reason of those who may have dropped out of the circle. It makes better men and women of us all, for blood after all is thicker than water, and the influences of home are stronger and safer than those of the world. And if from the open door of the home some ray of light should stream out sufficiently to illuminate and cheer some other home less happy in its appointments and less fortunate in this world's goods, then would each one's Thanksgiving be crowned with a most grateful benediction.

It's a sweetly worded sentiment, encouraging in its broad contours, but I wonder how self-deceptive it is to assume that those less fortunate than yourself will be cheered simply by seeing how happy you are. Let me propose an alternative, perhaps in better keeping with the way we should interpret blessings from God. This Thanksgiving make an effort, however, small to not only be thankful for what you have received but to give someone else cause to be grateful to God for you.

Thanksgiving Eve

In the proud tradition of offering thoughtful historical quotes, the following--from the November 26, 1857 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune--is presented for your consideration:

No paper will be issued from this office tomorrow--Thanksgiving Day.

Texts on Thanksgiving: Jonathan Edwards

This short quote is from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards entitled "The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth:”

When God hath opened a very large treasure before us, for the supply of our wants, and we thank him that he hath given us so much; if at the same time we be willing to remain destitute of the greatest part of it, because we are too lazy to gather it, this will not show the sincerity of our thankfulness.

Edwards has in mind here particularly the abundance of information which God has revealed about Himself for mankind’s benefit. The Bible, for example, lies waiting to be plumbed for the abundant and rejuvenating truth which it records. Edwards balked at the idea that the information was so readily available and yet so few people took advantage of it. (Easily imaginable is the kind of invective he would call down on contemporary society, with its obscenely ready access to Scripture and inversely proportional apathy to its message.) Yet, the idea carries beyond just knowledge. God has afforded to humanity abundant blessings that merely await human appropriation. Salvation must spring immediately to mind, offered freely to all and yet rejected by so many. More convicting still is the abundant time and resources of so many of the world’s Christians for which they give thanks but with which they never do anything productive for God’s ends.

Edwards insists that gratitude for some blessings best takes the form of seizing those blessings when they are offered. Are there gifts which God has offered that we refuse to accept for His purposes?

Texts on Thanksgiving: Symeon the New Theologian

The following passage may be found in Symeon the New Theologian’s homily On Faith:

I grieve, I exhaust my heart, I pine for you when I bring to mind that we have a Lord so bountiful and compassionate that simply if we have faith in Him He grants us gifts beyond our imagination—gifts we have never heard or thought of and that ‘man’s heart has not grasped.’ Yet we, like beasts, prefer the earth and the things of the earth that through His mercy it yields in order to supply our bodily needs…This is our purpose, for this we were created and brought forth: that after having received lesser blessings in this world we may through our gratitude to God and our love for Him enjoy great and eternal blessings in the life to come. But, alas, far from having any concern for the blessings in store, we are even ungrateful for those at hand, and we are like the demons, or—if truth be told—even worse. Thus we deserve greater punishment than they, for we have been given greater blessings. For we know that God became for our sakes like us in everything except sin, so that He might deliver us from delusion and free us from sin. But what is the use of saying this? The truth is that we believe in all these things only as words, while we deny them where our acts are concerned. Is not Christ’s name uttered everywhere, in towns and villages, in monasteries and on mountains? Search diligently, if you will, and find out whether anyone keeps His commandments.

Symeon, with fearful conviction, speculates about just how deep is human ingratitude. It is one thing that humanity should prefer the immediate, terrestrial blessings to the eschatological, supernal blessings. After all, the one is grasped by the senses and the intellect (if one is keenly perceptive), while the other is grasped only by faith and only in the spirit. Yet humanity is not even appropriately thankful for those earthly blessings it receives. Being more richly blessed than the demons—infinitely so—in this life, humans typically have a disposition no better than evil spirits. It raises doubts about whether or not humanity truly can be grateful for the eternal gifts which were bequeathed to it in the Incarnation since humans cannot seem to begin to show appropriate thanksgiving for the blessings which are experienced now.

Symeon suggests that the truest act of thanksgiving is obedience, which in turn mediates more blessings to creation. If he were alive today, would he still find that our thanksgiving exists “only in words?” Would he still say, “Among thousands and myriads you will scarcely find one who is a Christian both in word and in act.”

Texts on Thanksgiving: Peter of Damascus

Here is a text from Peter of Damascus, A Treasury of Divine Knowledge:

The purpose of what we say in our prayers is as follows. The thanksgiving is in recognition of our incapacity to offer thanksgiving as we should at this present moment, of our negligence in doing so at other times, and of the fact that the present moment is a gift of God's grace.

The prayers offered by the monks in Peter's day always began with a thanksgiving. This thanksgiving, according to Peter, was not so much a genuine fulfillment of humanity's duty to be grateful to God. In fact, it functioned first and foremost as a reminder that people cannot be truly thankful as they should. Whether it be sin or merely ignorance that prevents people from truly recognizing all that God does for His children, the gratitude offered God is never sufficient. It overlooks things that God has done and continues to do. Even if humanity were able to recognize every grace conferred to humanity, people could still not thank God adequately since every moment it would be necessary to thank God merely for the gift of being itself.

Peter recognizes that beneath every thanksgiving offered to God should be implicit remorse and recognition that it is never enough. Do we deceive ourselves into believing our gratitude is sufficient?

Texts on Thanksgiving: John Chrysostom

On Sunday morning, it seems appropriate that the text should come from perhaps the preeminent preacher in all of Christian history. This is from John Chrysostom's 15th Homily, a sermon regarding the martyrdom of Stephen:

None, I repeat, will be able to harm us, unless we harm ourselves; nor will any make me poor, unless I make myself such. For come, let us look at it in this way. Suppose that I have a beggarly soul, and let all lavish all their substance upon me, what of that? So long as the soul is not changed, it is all in vain. Suppose I have a noble soul, and let all men take from me my substance: what of that? So long as you do not make the soul beggarly, no harm is done…And why say I these things? None will ever be able to plot against us, nor lay us under any evil charge, if we choose (that they shall not). For how now, I ask you? Let him drag me into a court of justice, let him lay vexatious informations, let him, if you will, have the very soul out of me: and what of that? for a little while, undeservedly to suffer these things, what does it signify? “Well, but this,” say you, “is of itself an evil.” Well, but of itself this is a good, to suffer undeservedly.

what is a man injured, when from death itself he has got great gain, not merely no hurt? If indeed the man had been immortal, and this made him mortal, no doubt it would be a hurt: but if he be mortal, and in the course of nature must expect death a little later, and his enemy has but expedited his death, and glory with it, what is the harm? Let us but have our soul in good order, and there will be no harm from without. But thou art not in a condition of glory? And what of that? That which is true of wealth, the same holds for glory: if I be magnanimous I shall need none; if vainglorious, the more I get, the more I shall want. In this way shall I most become illustrious, and obtain greater glory; namely, if I despise glory. Knowing these things, let us be thankful to Him Who hath freely given us such a life, and let us ensue it unto His glory; for to Him belongs the glory, forever. Amen.

This text responds to the question of whether or not Stephen losses anything by virtue of being martyred. The preacher answers that persecutors took nothing from Stephen when was of any enduring worth. He was, after all, mortal to begin with. His life was not something he possessed; it was something he was slated to give up eventually anyway. Moreover, in dying Stephen found much more than he lost, embraced as he was by the eternal glory of God. Instead of depriving him of his life, Stephen’s murderers had ironically initiated him into Life. No matter how hard anyone may try to deprive Christians of anything, John Chrysostom reminds his listeners, so long as they have their priorities rightly ordered then their true treasure is invincible. It is for this that the preacher urges his audience to be grateful, that God should so love them as to give them a hope of life which can never be taken from them. They have an unassailable promise for future glory that of which trial, persecution, and even death cannot deprive them.

How often are we grateful when we are given that for which we ask? John reminds his readers that the greatest gift of God was that for which we did not ask, which we did not deserve, but which God took the initiative to grant us nonetheless.

Texts on Thanksgiving: Cyprian and the Roman Martyrs

This text is from a letter of Cyprian to those awaiting martyrdom in Rome:

Cyprian to the martyrs and confessors in Christ our Lord and in God the Father, everlasting salvation. I gladly rejoice and am thankful, most brave and blessed brethren, at hearing of your faith and virtue, wherein the Church, our Mother, glories. Lately, indeed, she gloried, when, in consequence of an enduring confession, that punishment was undergone which drove the confessors of Christ into exile; yet the present confession is so much the more illustrious and greater in honour as it is braver in suffering. The combat has increased, and the glory of the combatants has increased also. Nor were you kept back from the struggle by fear of tortures, but by the very tortures themselves you were more and more stimulated to the conflict; bravely and firmly you have returned with ready devotion, to contend in the extremest contest.

From the response of the Roman clergy on behalf of those suffering:

In which matter we ought to give you also, and we do give you, abundant thanks, that you have brightened the darkness of their prison by your letters; that you came to them in whatever way you could enter; that you refreshed their minds, robust in their own faith and confession, by your addresses and letters; that, following up their felicities with worthy praises, you have inflamed them to a much more ardent desire of heavenly glory; that you urged them forward; that you animated, by the power of your discourse, those who, as we believe and hope, will be victors by and by; so that although all may seem to come from the faith of those who confess, and from the divine mercy, yet they seem in their martyrdom to have become in some sort debtors to you.

In these complimenting passages we see an overflowing of thanksgiving from those who are perhaps least in a place to be grateful. Cyprian thanks God for the martyrs, not necessarily because they are being forced to suffer but because they are a true witness in their suffering. Cyprian is grateful to be associated with so powerful a testimony to the power of God’s goodness as those who would suffer willingly for the truth. He would follow their example at the end of his life. In turn, the martyrs echo Cyprian’s gratitude with overwhelming gratitude of their own. When darkness begins to creep up on them in their cells awaiting torment and death, they are grateful to be part of a community that glories in them and stands behind them unto death. Even when they are most isolated - separated from society, hidden away from their families, and condemned to death - they are never truly alone. They are part of a community, a heavenly body from which they cannot be separated by earthly means. They are sustained by the gratitude of their Christian family and they reciprocate by sustaining others with that same spirit of thanksgiving.

When the community of faith was still very much struggling in its infancy, Cyprian and the martyrs are abundantly thankful to part of the body of Christ. How often do we take it for granted?

Texts on Thanksgiving: Mark the Ascetic

The following text is from St. Mark the Ascetic's letter to Nicolas the Solitary:

Try, then, to remember unceasingly all the blessings that have been given to you by God. In particular, always keep in mind that miraculous grace which you told us He conferred on you when you were sailing with your mother from the Holy Land to Constantinople. Recall the terrifying and uncontrollable violence of the storm that broke on you during the night, and how everyone in thye ship, including the crew and your mother herself, perished in the sea; and how by an incredible acdt of divine power you and two others alone were thrown clear of the wreck and escaped. Remember how you came providentially to Ankyra, and how, with fatherly compassion, you were given hospitatlity by a certain freeman, and became friends with his devout son Epiphanios. Then both of you under the guidance of a holy man, entered on the path of salvation and were received as true sons of by the servants of
God.

What repayment for all these blessings can you possibly make to Him who has called your soul to eternal life? It is only right, then, that you should live no longer for yourself, but for Christ, who died for your sake and rose again. in your struggle to acquire every virtue and to fulfill every commandment, always seek "the good, acceptable and perfect will of God," endeavoring with all your strength to pursue it.

From this brief passage, we can gather that Nicolas, the letter's addresee, sometime in his past was returning home from a pilgramage to the Holy Land. During the course of his return voyage, the ship was overtaken by a violent storm that killed most of the crew, most of the passengers, and Nicolas' own mother. Nicolas himself was thrown adrift at sea and eventually washed up at Ankyra. Yet for all this, Mark insists that Nicolas should be thankful, not only generally - as if it were some default disposition in spite of the circumstances - but particularly about this miraculous grace above all others. Why? Because Nicolas emerged from this harrowing ordeal a better person, a reformed person, a true son of God.

Mark saw providence working for the benefit of God's people even in their trials. Do we reserve our gratitude for blessings which conform to our expectations?