Divine Revelation not only opens up truths relevant to the world to come—to the Kingdom.  It also establishes a rational basis for a worldview here and now, a point of reference—THE point of reference—from which to assess and fully understand culture and its products.  Christ as man, as ethnic Jew, as citizen of Roman Palestine, as King, and as high priest—historically as actual as the bones of my skull—provides the definitive point of reference, the relativizing dead-point on the epistemological pendulum, for assessing every human, racial, socio-political, authoritative, and propitiative endeavor.  Everything is in relation to Christ, derives its value in and through him, and will be judged and exonerated or condemned by him and in light of him.

Armed with and shaped by these truths, the Christian mind faces the world squarely. And yet it never feels quite at home in the world, not in any political party, not with fellow citizens, not even with simple blood or ethnic relations.  In the words of the 2nd century Epistle to Diognetus: “Christians dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners.  As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.  Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.”
 
Can a Christian, or at least a Catholic, give himself unreservedly to the values of so charming a feast as Thanksgiving?  It depends on what values one’s looking at.  No friends of Catholics, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, English Protestants of the 17th century, were homogeneously Puritans, members of a politically revolutionary sect intent on overthrowing the English crown, which they succeeded in doing in 1649 when under Oliver Cromwell they severed King Charles I’s head from his body and set up Cromwellian thugs in Parliament for a decade of despotic rule.  Thirty years earlier they set sail for the new world to escape the persecution they provoked by their dogmatic intolerance.
 
The Mayflower Pilgrims were doubtlessly remarkable people, sincere, enormously courageous and earnest in their beliefs.  And the God whom they thanked for their prosperity and whose favor they invoked for their posterity was and is the divine author of Christian revelation, the father of Jesus Christ, who is head of his body the Church.  But given the opportunity they would as eagerly have severed that body from its head as they did Charles’s.
 
Catholics therefore should certainly thank their heavenly father for the gifts he gave to history through the exploits of the Pilgrims.  And since God’s work in history is always through sinful men and women, they too should thank God for the Pilgrims themselves.  But their thanks for the works of fallen persons, any persons, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and unbelievers, is always a qualified thanks.  It recognizes that God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts; that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts (cf. Isaiah 55:8-9).  To him, and only him, be glory and thanks forever.

Happy Thanksgiving.

E. Christian Brugger, Senior Fellow

Every year at Thanksgiving, I give thanks to God for my faith, family, friends...but this year, with the opportunity to share my Thanksgiving thoughts with the Culture of Life Foundation's readership, I've spent some time reflecting on what - in addition to my "usual suspects" listed above - I am thankful for this year.  Here are a five of them:

I am thankful that I am a woman, born and raised in faith, in a time when the beauty of womanhood, femininity and motherhood are under constant attack and women are in need - more than ever - of female voices willing to speak the truth.

I am thankful for each and every opportunity  to spread and defend the truths of Christianity; I am particularly thankful for The Culture of Life Foundation, for providing such an opportunity for myself and others.

I am thankful that I can say with great confidence that I live in a society where the majority of young people consider themselves to be "pro-life."

I am thankful that, despite the continuing battle on human dignity, I live in a country whose founding document declares that the right to LIFE is the first and foremost inalienable human right.

I am thankful for the future days ahead, with their promise of growing in knowledge, gaining new insights on the interplay of faith and reason in the context of Christian bioethics, and observing increased recognition of human dignity in culture, law, the arts and other spheres of society.

Wishing you all a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving!

Maggie Datiles

 
At age 82, I have many reasons to offer thanks to God first of all and to hundreds of people, some whom I may not even know. I and my wife of 52 years, a precious gift God gave me, both enjoy basically good health, both physical and mental. We were blest with loving, caring parents, and I, whom my Irish grandmother called a “rose between two thorns,” had two great sisters. God has blest us with seven children, four boys, three girls. Of these six are happily married, and their spouses are wonderful daughters-and sons-in-law (and their parents are good friends whose company we enjoy), and they in turn have been blessed with fifteen children—our grandchildren, ranging in age from 1 to 21, and the unmarried son rejoices as a favorite Uncle. Our children, moreover, are close friends as well as biologically related; they share their lives as much as possible, even though they may live a continent away or, in one case, in a foreign land. So for all this I offer thanks. I have definitely not had to carry a very heavy cross, but I know many who do. One is my older sister whose seven children have suffered terrible tragedies and caused her years of very serious grief, now compounded with grave medical problems. Yet she bears her cross cheerfully, putting her life into God’s hands, trusting that Jesus will be her Simon of Cyrene, ready to help her bear her cross. This is also true of many persons with whom my wife and I now live in a “retirement village” of almost 3000 people and who are almost constantly in pain because of arthritis and other physical problems.
 
Above all, I am thankful for God’s great love and mercy. When I was born prematurely I was immediately “reborn” to a new kind of life, God’s very own life, by being baptized and through baptism sharing in the death and resurrection of his only begotten Son made man, Jesus Christ. By my own sinful choices, I, like many others, destroyed that life, refusing God’s offer of friendship. But in his infinite mercy he providentially led me, a prodigal son, back home to be united once more to Jesus, our best and wisest friend, sharing his divinity just as he shares our humanity.  He thus taught me that he is indeed the Hound of Heaven, and he wants me and others to love all people, even those who hate us, with his own self-giving kind of love, a love that is life giving and grace giving, a love that makes all things new. I thank him for this and pray that he, the One who will never forget or abandon me because my name is inscribed in the palm of his hand, will help me to be faithful to him and never abandon him. What a grace he has given me by making me a Catholic and a member of the Church, whose one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord, the church built on the “rock” of Peter and his successors.

William E. May, Ph.D. Senior Fellow 

Giving thanks is a gift, found in our ability to choose to give and recognize our very humanity and the humanity of others as we stand before our Creator.  It is a gift that stems from our very being and, when recognized and chosen, proceeds forth from our reality as creatures in the image and likeness of God. The words of St. Paul, “In him we live and move and have our being”
invites us to first let go of ourselves and our clinging to the earth so that we can offer forth the praise and thanksgiving that resides deep in the heart of our being, and deep in the heart of life.
 
And more than gratitude for life, thanksgiving dwells also in the noble task of stewardship, in solidarity with our fellow man, cultures and peoples.  It is an integral reality of our being and relationship with the created world that supplies our needs.  Those first pilgrims off the Mayflower gave thanks for life, for fellowship, especially with the Indians, and for the noble task of stewardship in solidarity over the goods of the earth found in their first harvest.  The beautiful words of the early twentieth century Lebanese born poet, Khalil Gibran, offer a most beautiful and true reflection of giving thanks in solidarity and stewardship: 

All you have shall some day be given;
Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.
You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

May your celebration of thanks this season resonate in your families, communities and, most especially, with Him in whom we “live and move and have our being.”
 
Happy Thanksgiving!

Jennifer I. Kimball, Director, Fellows Program

(c) 2010 Culture of Life Foundation.  Reproduction granted with attribution required.

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it