by Fr. Rich Andre, C.S.P.
November 28, 2022

Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the Eve of Thanksgiving Day on November 23, 2022 at The Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on Sirach 50:22-24; Psalm 145; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; and Luke 22:14-20.

This is our final Mass of the liturgical year, our final Mass for a while with the Gospel of Luke.

Every year for Thanksgiving, we traditionally hear Luke’s story of Jesus healing the ten lepers and only one coming back to give thanks. However, we just heard this passage at Mass 45 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. 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!

Tonight, we’ll use a different gospel passage from Luke. Madison Avenue bills 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! 

But first, let’s take a full minute of silence to thank God for all the good things we have received this year, including God’s ongoing gift of mercy. 

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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 that I’ve realized 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. One out of every five sentences in the Gospel of Luke is about a meal!  

What was the significance of the meals that Jesus shared and the parables that Jesus shared about meals, and what was the significance with whom Jesus chose to share those meals and parables? Scripture scholars identify meanings that, when combined, start to sound a lot like the Paulist Center mission statement: Evangelization. Reconciliation. Invitation to all. I’d argue it also reflects the newly-identified priorities set by the 2022 General Assembly of the Paulist Fathers: 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, nor do we know exactly what 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 Qiddush, 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. 

Because these two prayers did not have set words,¹ 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 with 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 13 versions of the Eucharistic prayer we use in the Roman Catholic Church in 2022, 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 the vigil of the holiest day in the American secular calendar, may we remember that the Greek word “Eucharist” itself means “thanksgiving.”

 

Notes: