OUR TRUE "THANKSGIVING"

Thanksgiving Day is thought to be a "family day" so how do nuns who don't go "home for the holidays" celebrate? By being a family, of course! Yes, we celebrate Thanksgiving with a Turkey and the usual fixin's. Some years we cook and some years we are blessed to have our Thankgiving Day dinner given to us by the Grand Summit Hotel down the street from us! Their generosity is legendary!

Still it's not a "day off" for us! Our true work, the Opus Dei, continues. Always the center of our day is the Mass, the real Thanksgiving of every Catholic, for after all, Eucharist means thanksgiving! Thanksgiving should be the fundamental attitude of our lives, not just of nuns but of every Christian.

We have so much for which to be thankful. Beginning with the gift of our Faith, Jesus has poured into our lap gifts which no one on earth could come close to giving: His very self in the Eucharist, the gift of His total forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit to mention a few of the Sacraments. And how can we ever completely thank Him for giving His Mother to be our own Mother?

A while ago, a friend gave me the following words from Symeon the New Theologian, an Eastern Orthodox theologian of the 10th century. They so beautifully express what the gift of the Holy Eucharist means to me:

"Partaking of the divine mysteries

which deify man,

I am no longer alone,

but with Thee,

O my Christ...

and I shall never be left without Thee,

the Life-giver,

my Breath, My Life, my Joy,

the Salvation of the world."