December 1, 2025
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2025 at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on Sirach 50:22-24; Psalm 145; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; and Luke 22:14-20.
On Thanksgiving Day in the United States, we hear Luke’s story of Jesus healing the ten lepers and only one coming back to give thanks. However, we just heard that passage at Sunday Mass 45 days ago and at daily Mass 15 days ago. In case you forgot the main point of that gospel, here it is again: thanksgiving and faith are inseparable from one another. Both require us to place God at the center of our concerns. Both in matters of faith and in matters of thanksgiving, it’s not about us; it’s about God. No matter how dark our personal circumstances may become, people of faith should still be able to find many things for which to give thanks! Let’s take a full minute of silence to thank God for all the good things we have received this year. [Pause for 60 seconds.]
Today, we’ll use a different gospel passage from Luke. Advertisers bill Thanksgiving dinner as “the most important meal of the year.” Let’s spend time with Luke’s account of the most important meal in the history of the world, a meal that illustrated God’s unending mercy for each of us.
I have lived a lot of different places, and I’ve made a lot of friends almost everywhere I’ve lived. In my 20s and 30s, when I would return to a city and visit as many friends as possible, it was a very… ahem, caloric experience. I would cram 5 or 6 get-togethers each day over meals, snacks, desserts, and drinks. It was only in my 40s and 50s that I’ve begun to realize that I have to reduce my calorie-to-friend ratio!
There’s nothing all that remarkable about eating. All members of the animal kingdom do it. But there’s something truly special in sharing a meal. What makes it special? Is it the extra effort we take to cook the meal? The luxury of eating in a restaurant? The extra time we spend lingering over the meal, enjoying each other’s presence? Something transcends meeting of our most basic physiological needs!
We don’t know much about the day-to-day life of the historical Jesus, but one thing is clear: Jesus did a lot of ministry around food, especially as told in the Gospel of Luke!
What was the significance of the meals that Jesus shared and the parables that Jesus shared about meals? What was the significance of whom Jesus chose to share those meals and parables? Scripture scholars identify meanings that, when combined, start to sound a lot like the mission priorities of the Paulist Fathers in general and Old St. Mary’s in particular: Evangelization. Reconciliation. Invitation to all. Confronting toxic polarization. Reaching out to marginalized populations.
When the evangelists recalled Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, they tell of a ritual meal near the end of Jesus’ ministry in which he did something out of the ordinary, something central to how the disciples chose to carry on his ministry. We don’t know if this meal was a Passover meal. We don’t know what exactly Jesus did at this meal. The actions of Jesus that Paul and the evangelists report to us surround two blessings that were said at every ritual meal in Judaism, not just during the Passover.
The first blessing was called the Quiddush, a prayer of thanksgiving offered over a cup of wine and some unleavened bread at the beginning of the meal. The second was the Birkat ha-mazon, a prayer of thanksgiving offered over a particular “cup of blessing” at the conclusion of the meal. These blessings had no set words or formulas, but they always included two important Judaic themes: thanksgiving and memorial. In giving thanks, the person leading the prayer would recall the great deeds that the Lord had done for the Jewish people in the past. For first-century Jews, the word “memorial” was not a simple act of remembering: the prayer was intended to bring the great deeds of God into the present moment. This, in turn, enhanced the gratitude of the people participating in the meal.1
Because these two prayers did not have set words, they called for the presider to be creative. At the Last Supper, the disciples perceived something in Jesus’ blessings that was truly transformative. But what was Jesus’ innovation? It was probably something so obvious to Jews that Mark and Matthew don’t even bother spelling it out in their accounts. Luke and Paul, writing for Gentile audiences, make it a bit more obvious. They place some extra words on Jesus’ lips: “Do this in memory of me.” To put it another way, Jesus instructed them, “Whenever you recall the great deeds that God has done for you, include God’s gift of me to you… and in your recollection, I will become present to you, with you, and among you.”
And indeed, we Christians have brought the Jewish ideas of thanksgiving and memorial into the Mass. The Eucharistic prayer has its origins in the Qiddush and the Birkat ha-mazon. In each of the many versions of the Eucharistic prayer we use in the Roman Catholic Church in 2025, we recall the great deeds of God, culminating in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. And in that thanksgiving, Christ becomes present among us in a most powerful way.
At Mass, Jesus Christ is present in multiple ways. Christ is present in our very gathering as his Body. Christ is present in the Scriptures proclaimed to us. It still freaks me out a bit that the Church says that Christ is present in the person of the priest. And, through our thanksgiving and memorial, Christ becomes truly present, body and blood, soul and divinity, in the Eucharist itself. As we worship on this, the holiest day in the American secular calendar, may we remember that the Greek word “Eucharist” itself means “thanksgiving.”
Wherever our celebrations take us today, whether celebrating with friends or family, or spending time alone, may we find a way to bring Christ’s presence with us. And may we deepen our gratitude.
Notes
- We have written examples of Qiddush prayers from before the time of Jesus, including in The Book of Jubilees. ↩