Photo Credit Jane Korvemaker

By Jane Korvemaker

The crisp and cool autumn mornings are always a sure sign to me of the end of the warm weather. They also signal to me that soon we will be making merry at a table full of the fruits of the harvest.

The celebration of Thanksgiving is a time for us to celebrate the fruits of the land and the harvest we reap. I’ve discovered that practicing giving thanks in small and ordinary things is actually a practice of sowing seeds of thankful prayer. Each time I can give thanks to God for something in the moment, the harvest I can anticipate reaping is one of a humble and grateful heart.

In 2010, Ann Voskamp wrote a book entitled ‘1000 Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.’ She wove a beautiful story of how she took up a challenge to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:18) and discovered the life we were meant to live in thanksgiving, that is, eucharisteo:

 Endless thanksgiving, eucharisteo, had opened me to this, the way of the fullest life. From initial union to intimate communion – it isn’t exclusively the domain of the monastics and ascetics, pastors and missionaries, but I, domestic scrubber of potatoes, sister to Brother Lawrence, could I have unbroken communion, fullest life with fullest God? ‘To be a saint is to be fueled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less,’ writes Ronald Rolheiser.

1000 Gifts, 210.

In our baptism, God gifts us with all we need to live fully in him. At confirmation, his Spirit descends upon us, expanding this horizon of fullness. These two – baptism and confirmation – are what prepare us for full communion. Communion – both the Body we consume and Body we are and are becoming. This becoming doesn’t –can’t– stop. To stop is to lose our life. So it continues. It deepens. How does it deepen?

Thanksgiving. Eucharisteo.

In preparation for our tables this coming weekend, we can expand the feast. As we haul a large bird from the depths of a freezer, as we tidy our gathering spaces to make room for others, as our kids come home with crafted turkeys, let us give thanks for it all.

But it is not only in the joys and the mundane that we are called to give our thanks: “give thanks in all circumstances.” When our hearts are broken from the loss of our loved ones, when our anxieties are high watching children, family, or friends struggle, when we encounter injustice against us and others, let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is good because we are experiencing. We are here, and because we are here, Christ is here.

Jesus showed us that giving thanks to God is not something that only comes from benevolent circumstances,

For on the night

he was betrayed

he himself took bread,

and, giving you thanks, he said the blessing,

broke the bread and gave it to his disciples saying:

 Take this, all of you, and eat of it,

for this is my body,

which will be given up for you.

Eucharistic Prayer IV, Roman Missal, 3rd Edition

He was broken for all of us, yet still, he gave God thanks. When I, too, can be broken and still offer to God my thanksgiving, I become Christ. His Spirit shines forth through me, and in ways I cannot yet fully imagine, I can become transformed. I–we– become Communion, eucharisteo.

The preparation for our Thanksgiving celebration can, in its very heart, embody the faith that keeps us alive in him. Our two celebrations, gathering together as family in and through Christ’s Body at Mass (the Eucharist, the Thanksgiving) and the celebration of Thanksgiving at home with those we love, reflect our life in Christ.

Just as the early church would gather, cool and crisp in the morning to sing hymns and break bread together and then in the evening gather for the agape feast, so too do we this weekend. The seeds of thanksgiving we sow regularly through our day are a way of stopping the work of our hands and giving God our knees in prayer, recognizing that, above all, he can do more than we can.

And that is something for which we can be truly thankful.

Jane Korvemaker is a B.C. transplant who lives in Saskatoon with her husband, three children, and mischievous cat. She holds a Certificate in Culinary Arts, Bachelor of Theology, Certificate in Youth Ministry Studies, and is a Level Two Catechist in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She hopes to one day find the perfect pairing of bacon, beer, and Balthasar. She semi-regularly writes at ajk2.ca