Dear Friends in Christ,
Happy Thanksgiving 2020 everybody!
This will no doubt be a memorable Thanksgiving. For your own sake, I hope it is small and intimate. Most Thanksgiving holidays are celebrated by Americans, who don’t cook that much, by spending the entire day in the kitchen cooking up a meal that by the time it gets to the table is cold, and needs copious amounts of hot gravy to warm things up again! I simply speak from experience.
I have all kinds of memories of Thanksgiving meals. When I was in Alaska, I was adopted by a family and I attended their huge family dinner on two occasions. I moved up from the kids table the second year. Another year in Chehalis, I dined at the Providence Centralia Hospital cafeteria with a seminarian, as we were ministering to a couple of sick patients and their families at the hospital that year. When I was in law school at UPS, we always had a couple of law students at our family table. Mainly, I remember our family dinners, where everyone had a traditional assignment. My mom made the stuffing and got the turkey ready. My grandmother made the pies, including that strange mincemeat concoction. My dad made the gravy from scratch and I helped my granddad carve the turkey….and I still have and use the original electric carving knife! These events all made for great memories.
At the heart of this, though, is to celebrate and offer thanks for our many blessings. Friends, take note of your blessings and thank God for each and every one of them. That’s what we do every time we celebrate the Eucharist, which itself means thanksgiving in Greek. So, from God’s altar to our meal time tables, our gratitude is expressed so the fruit of joy can be fully received as we offer thanks to God. And so, we “sing and make music to the Lord in our hearts, always thanking God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Ephesians 5:19-20.
Have a blessed day!
Fr. David Mulholland
Pastor
‌
‌
‌
‌
‌