Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, November 27, 2025

My friends, it is good for us to be together to begin this day of thanks. And I am grateful to be with all of you, our parish family members from Christ Our Hope and Immaculate Conception, and parishioners here at St. James, and all our visitors. It is good to be here with my brother priests. It is very good for us to be together to give praise and thanks to our generous God.
 
For more than a century and a half Americans have gathered on the fourth Thursday in November to give thanks for all God has given us. But the instinct to give thanks goes back much further than Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of 1863.
 
Even before Sarah Hale’s lobbying of Lincoln and his predecessors that this day be designated a day of thanks, and before George Washington’s request for a day of thanksgiving in 1789, and even before what has become a mythical first thanksgiving in 1621, our ancestors knew of the need to give thanks.
 
We gather this day in 2025, to carry on that tradition of giving thanks. Our thanks, to be shared later today in meals with loved-ones, and perhaps even spiced by a little football, has elements that Hale, Washington and Lincoln would not recognize. But at the heart of what we do today - gathering to give thanks to God - they would know well.
 
The ancient author of the Book of Sirach reflects this instinct to give thanks as he concludes his work from the second century before Christ: “And now, bless the God of all,” he writes, “who has done wondrous things on earth; who fosters people’s growth from their mother’s womb, and fashions them according to his will!”
 
And so we do what is deep in our bones, what is our instinct, to gather around this altar, this Table of Thanksgiving, to bless and praise the God who freely and generously bestows his love and care upon us in his Son, Jesus Christ.
 
But like our ancestors before us, we gather this day to give thanks in the midst of much pain and strife. War, poverty, injustice, and threats to freedom.
 
In October of 1863, those threats were front and center for Abraham Lincoln even as he proclaimed this day of Thanksgiving. Lincoln wrote that “in the midst of a civil war of unequal magnitude and severity,” the year that is drawing to a close is also one that “has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.”
 
We too have to remember, in the midst of personal, national and international struggles, that God has blessed us abundantly. We have to make sure we do not lose sight of the source of our blessings. We have to make sure, even in the midst of pain and sadness, of loss and lament, that we nurture hearts of gratitude.
 
That is not always easy to do on our own, so we gather with family and friends around a lavish table of good food and take time out to shift our focus to what we are grateful for.
 
At the same time, this day also prompts us to be mindful of those who do lack what is needed for human flourishing - food and friends and love and care. Lincoln was mindful of this 162 years ago when he wrote, as part of his proclamation:
 
 “… I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also implore the… Almighty… to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.”
 
And while we may not be engaged in the kind of crisis that faced our nation during the Civil War, we do know that among us are many vulnerable people who need God’s tender care: people who are poor, people without a home, those who are sick or dying, and especially in these days, our immigrant brothers and sisters.
 
That is why it has been so important for us for so long here at St. James to include in this Thanksgiving liturgy, food and contributions for those in need, and later today, to serve a meal in our Cathedral Hall.
 
It is why it has been so important for parishioners at Christ Our Hope to host a Thanksgiving banquet the week before Thanksgiving for the residents of the Josephinum. It is why Immaculate Conception parishioners, through the St. Vincent de Paul Society, support their neighbors with food, including a special collection this time of the year for the Byrd Barr Foodbank.
At the heart of our giving thanks, just as it was in 1863, is a call to prayer and action on behalf of those who are hurting and who have much less than we do.
 
What we give is an expression of our gratitude for all that God has given us, and like good stewards, we make a return to God in thanks. Such acknowledgment and outreach should not dampen our celebrations today, but enrich them by putting our gratitude into action. It is a fundamental way for us to do what the Lord commands in today’s Gospel, that we love one another as he has loved us.
 
You and I come to this Table crying out to God to heal our own pain and the pain of so many in our country and around the world. We gather knowing that for far too long our nation has created a myth that has glossed over the gross injustice perpetrated on our Native American brothers and sisters.
 
We come with confidence as a people of faith, as a parish family, knowing that the God who has blessed us so abundantly throughout our history, will continue to heal us and bless us.
 
Let us hear those words of St. Paul to the Church in Philippi with new ears today. “I give thanks to God at every remembrance of you,” Paul writes,  “praying always with joy in my every prayer for all of you, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
 
My friends, this is what our partnership in the Gospel is all about, allowing us to more and more be the effective sign and instrument of Christ’s love in the world.
 
If we can continue to nurture hearts of gratitude, and make a return to the Lord in thanks, then, in the words of St. Paul, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
 
As we gather around the altar now, to celebrate our “Eucharist,” our best expression of “Thanksgiving,” may we know deep in our hearts the blessings that have been passed down to us through the centuries.
 
And may our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ continue to strengthen us to make a return to the Lord in thanks through action on behalf of all who are in need.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni