REFLECTION – Thankfulness

by Father Innocent
St. John’s Monastery

Thanksgiving Day is a uniquely American holiday and one that contains many worthy Christian values. Of all the holidays we celebrate in America, Thanksgiving Day, with it’s underlying ideals of gratitude and sharing, is one most “blessable” by the Church. It’s right up there with Mother’s Day and Veteran’s Day. It is thus fitting for us to look closely into the meaning of this day and discovery how we can deepen our gratitude toward God and each other and deepen the meaning of this national holiday in an Orthodox manner.

As Americans we live and move in a particular culture. This culture influences us in everything we do and think—yet we are mostly unaware of it, like a fish unaware of the water it swims in every day. As individual people are often blind to their own passions, so we too, as a nation, are blind to our collective faults. We often only discover those faults when we are taken “outside the fishbowl” and come to look at ourselves from a different perspective. I came to discover this after I lived as a missionary in Russia. Only upon my return to the United States after two years abroad, was I able to see a little more clearly the water in which I was swimming my whole life.

One cultural fault that stands out most clearly is our materialism. I learned about this in a round about way. As missionaries, we sought to network with the leaders of the community. Thus, we arranged to meet with the mayor of Mirnyy–the Siberian town we were based at. We had decided, for this auspicious occasion, to present a gift of a painting to our town’s leader. Perhaps, in the back of our minds, we were thinking how impressed he would be with this beautiful painting. We were ushered in to a large, official-looking office where we met the mayor, and presented our gift. He thanked us, and, with little more than a glance, set our gift aside. The usual, American custom of looking at the gift, admiring it, and thanking profusely was totally absent from the interchange. It took us a little by surprise, but, because we had read a little about Russian culture beforehand, we knew the explanation: the giver is more important than the gift. To focus on the gift is to diminish the real significance of what had taken place: someone had shown you an act of generosity and that someone was far more important than any object he or she had given you.

In my family, during each Thanksgiving dinner, we go around the table and take turns to say what we were thankful for. This is a good custom and a correct response of a human being to his or her Maker: gratitude. As the years went by, and childhood vanished, my “list of things I’m thankful for” changed. “Toys” and “food” began to be replaced by “peace of heart” and “Church.” There certain things that we just take for granted, yet we learn to value the eternal only as we feel them threatened or swept away by the hectic life of a grown-up. As monastics, we voluntarily renounce possessions, married life, and freedom to live wherever we want or do whatever we want. This stripping away of material things and personal freedoms helps us set aside the gift and turn in gratitude to the One who forever gives. It can even lead to a deeper kind of thankfulness—gratitude for the painful and hard things that happen in life. “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials,” (James 1:2). It is good to be thankful, and, as we look closely at the gift, let it remind us of the Giver. Knowing that the Giver is good, we can trust Him even when His gift is strange or difficult. As the gift leads us to the Giver, we learn that what we are ultimately thankful for is God Himself.