It was the first Thanksgiving since my aunt had passed away. As family gathered for our meal prayer, a certain heaviness hung in the air. My aunt’s physical absence was palpable. My aunt Terri had a “larger than life” personality. Her big hugs were like a favorite blanket, fully enveloping you, warming you to the core. Moreover, my mother and all her sisters are all wonderful cooks. Even looking at the Thanksgiving table evoked a sense of loss.
My cousin referred to our collective grief as “the elephant in the room.”
Rather than immediately beginning with the traditional meal prayer, we began by naming our own sense of grief and loss. We remembered my aunt’s many gifts. There was both laughter and tears. With our meal prayer we offered the prayers of hearts.
Our family Thanksgiving was a bittersweet experience. We held both grief and loss, gratitude and a sense of hope.
I feel a collective heaviness in my heart again this year, but the lens is wider. There is sense of loss for members of the Precious Blood community who have gone before us, and yet gratitude for lives well lived. Widening the lens further, I am aware of the deep losses experienced by people across our country and around the world impacted by the recent government shutdown, and by funding cuts across all areas of the nation’s budget. On a national holiday characterized by sharing and celebrating the bounty of a harvest, I am painfully aware of people who are hungry:
- Families who have gone hungry because they have been without a federal paycheck, or without SNAP benefits.
- People in other countries who lost access to food and crucial medical care in so many areas of the world because of cuts to USAID.
I believe that, especially in this time and place, we are called to be a Eucharistic people, to be people of hope. The literal translation for Eucharist is “to give thanks.” If we reflect on how we gather at the Eucharistic table, we have a model or process for how we are to be in the world and with one another.
In the gathering rite, we gather as the assembly, we confess our sins. Through the Liturgy of the Word, we listen to the Word of God, we hear stories of faithful people, we see the ministry of Jesus. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we bring the stuff of our lives (bread and wine, our bodies, minds and hearts) to the table. We believe the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. And when we receive communion, we become what/who we eat: the body and blood of Jesus. With the dismissal, we are exhorted to “Go in peace; to love and serve the Lord.”
The Eucharist serves as our nourishment to be Christ’s body and blood in the world; to be the hands and feet of Jesus; to live the beatitudes in the world.
May we bring our whole selves to our Thanksgiving celebration(s): our grief and loss, our joy and gratitude. May we be nourished and transformed, so that we may be a Eucharistic people in word and deed.
— Blog entry by Maria Ollier Burkett, Salem Heights Spiritual Care Companion
The post Thanksgiving first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.