Guest Column

A reflection on the Eucharist and Thanksgiving Day

By Anthony Lilles

Like the Eucharist, holiday a reminder to praise God for his providence

At the end of a special meal commemorating Israel’s journey out of the slavery of Egypt and into the freedom of His promises, Jesus transformed bread and wine into the sacrificial offering of his own body and blood in thanksgiving to the Father. 

He longed for the restoration of Israel and the salvation of the nations.  So he offered an unimaginable gift in the form of bread and wine to establish a new covenant and inaugurate a new exodus.  This gift was his presence, his body and blood as spiritual food.  In this way, the disciples of the Lord received the opportunity to co-inhere, to participate in the intimate relationship Jesus enjoyed with God, the Father.  With this profound thanksgiving, the Lord offered an equally unimaginable petition—the supreme wish of Jesus: “May they be one, Father, as we are one.” 

So powerful was his Eucharist (which means prayer of thanksgiving) that this would become the principle means by which his disciples would recognize his presence until the end of time.   By imitating this prayer as the Lord commanded them to do, the very first Christians discovered the Lord’s abiding presence, dynamic power, and unconquerable love.  The exodus of Christ Crucified, as he passed through the mystery of sin and death opened up for them a new kind of freedom, the truly restored Kingdom of Israel in which the Lord is worshipped in spirit and truth. 

Is there any relationship between this thanksgiving of Jesus and the thanksgiving of the pilgrims in the midst of their struggles to settle the America?

The national holiday we celebrate in November has its roots in the religious practices of British colonists of the 17th century.   This is true even if, as some suggest, the first thanksgiving was held in Florida or Texas in the 16th century by Spanish explorers who offered a special Mass of Thanksgiving for successful expeditions.  Instead, it is the feasts of thanksgiving shared in Virginia’s Berkeley Hundred or Gov. Bradford’s Plymouth from which our Thanksgiving derives.  These religious celebrations in honor of God for his bountiful providence and protection were observed by feasts when blessed with plenty and by fasts when burdened with famine.  But whether by feasting or fasting, this time of prayer in the New World was a witness to a religious hope, a hope rooted in the mercy of the Lord.  

Here, a wonderful connection between America’s Thanksgiving and the Lord’s Eucharist comes into focus.   When the Lord invited his followers to share in his Body and Blood, he was inviting them into a profound communion and a great journey.  In this new exodus, our tears of joy and sorrow mingle with the Lord’s and with those whom He gives to us as we, together, take up our own cross and follow Him.  All aspects of life, especially those dark difficulties we would rather ignore, are meant to be taken up in our pilgrimage of faith, an exodus out of sin and death and into the fulfillment of God’s promises.  Like Jesus, our thanksgiving ought to always be joined with the petition, “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

For many of our forefathers, whether of those original colonists or else of those later waves of immigrants, the journey to America came to be experienced as a visible expression of this spiritual pilgrimage.   The real life hardships attached to this journey to the New World reminded them of the spiritual exodus into the Kingdom of God.  It reminded them that our lives are not merely about material success but rather faithfulness to the Lord whether in times of plenty or in times of adversity. In a special way, this is why we gather as friends and family like the first pilgrims—for the original American experience is something that continues on with us.  We like our forefathers are invited to see the providence of God, even in the midst of life’s difficulties, and seeing this providence we have reason to raise our hearts together in thanksgiving, a communion of praise that leads to and flows from the thanksgiving of Christ himself.

Anthony Lilles. S.T.D., is academic dean at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver.