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What Am I Thankful For?

Each person enumerating the things they are thankful for; It's a tradition around many Thanksgiving day tables. We do it in our family too. The responses always range from humorous, to the cliche, to the heartfelt. All fine and good. It is part of Thanksgiving dinner after all.

As I began thinking about it this year, a line that we sing in the Gloria at Mass kept coming back to me. "We give thanks for your great Glory." What is this "great Glory" we give thanks for? I started allowing this question to run around in my mind and I remembered somewhere reading or hearing that God's Glory is His Creation. You know existence, the world, the universe, "all things visible and invisible", you and I incuded.

To help answer this question and expand on the idea of being thankful for God's "great Glory" I turned to the story of creation in the Bible and to the section in the Catechism on creation for further study. The bible points out that God created all things for the servie of man and that he created man in His image. God loves His creation and in His creation man holds a special place above all other created things. Furthermore, the catechism points out that God created out of Love and not necessity and that God holds all things in existence out of this same Love and that nothing would continue to without His will.

This year I will start with being thankful for this "great Glory", you know creation in general and my very existence and the very existence of all those who I love since all were a willful and loving act of God. I think that puts things in perspective and will allow me to see all things as a gift from God for which I should be thankful. I hope my family isn't hungry, my list might be kind of long this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!



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