In just a few short weeks families will gather to break bread and give thanks to God for the abundance of blessings we, as Americans, enjoy. This national holiday commemorates the feast celebrated by the Pilgrims and indigenous Indians in Massachusetts after that first harvest in 1621. Later, when America gained independence from England, George Washington, the Father of our Country, declared November 26th as a national day of thanksgiving. Later, at the end of the bloody Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln asked Americans to set aside the last Thursday of November as a “Day of Thanksgiving.” After attempting to help businesses lengthen the pre-Christmas shopping season, President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1939, set the observance a week earlier. Finally, in 1941, Congress ruled that the 4th Thursday in November would be a federal holiday, proclaimed by the President each year.

More important than determining a particular day for Thanksgiving is the wisdom of our forefathers of even designating such an observance. Never, more than the present, do Americans need both reminder and permission to pause and give thanks for God’s blessings. It is no coincidence that the gradual disintegration of the family is occurring at the same time the nightly family dinner fellowship is becoming rare, if not extinct. Yes, the Thanksgiving meal, which traditionally begins with prayer, ought to be the inspiration for a return to the table if, for nothing else, the re-integration of the family.

Interestingly, the word the Church uses interchangeably with the Divine Liturgy is Eucharist. In its demotic Greek expression, this term is familiarly used to give thanks, eucharisto! Literally translated, however, it means, the good gift. How apropos it is, that the weekly Sunday Eucharist is a meal of thanks, at which, the family of the faithful is gathered around the Lord’s Table, the Holy Altar, to partake of Good Gift, Holy Communion, for the remission of sins and life everlasting. It is this precious meal of thanksgiving and the Good Gift received, which binds us in Communion and enables us to realize our potential as the Body of Christ. Yes, the Divine Liturgy is Christ’s invitation to come to the table, to give thanks, to be nourished, to organically become united with Him and one another, and thus, become transfigured beings.

If we have strayed from the table, it is the result of our own neglect. May the natural joy of being together this Thanksgiving Day catalyze a radical change in our collective mindset, and may we all be inspired to come to the table, both to the dinner table and the Lord’s Holy Table!