1st Reading:          Sir 50:22-24

Psalm:                    Ps 138

2nd Reading:          Col 3:12-17

Gospel: Mk 5:18-20

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In 1789, George Washington declared a day of thanksgiving to acknowledge “the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” Washington set the day aside for Americans to give thanks for their newly established government, but most of all, to render unto God “sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection.” In his thanksgiving declaration, Washington rightfully acknowledged God as “the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

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Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th president, said similar things in proclaiming Thanksgiving Day a national holiday. It came during the Civil War, Lincoln recognized God alone as the object of a nation’s gratitude. He wrote that the day would be set aside to offer “Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwells in the heavens.”

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“Thanks,” said G.K. Chesterton, “is the highest form of thought.” He said that the worst moment for an atheist is when he is thankful and suddenly realizes he has no one to thank.

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The real origin of this national holiday has a Catholic history.

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St. Augustine, Florida, was the site of the first Thanksgiving celebration in America. In 1565, a fleet of Spanish ships bearing 800 colonists and 700 soldiers sighted land off the coast of Florida. Since it was Aug. 28, the feast of St. Augustine, the colony was named in honor of one of our greatest doctors of the Church. The entire colony, all the settlers, all the troops went ashore on Sept. 8. As he set foot on land, the admiral of the fleet, Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, kissed a crucifix and then claimed the land for the king of Spain.

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The colonists erected a makeshift outdoor altar and the colony’s chaplain, Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, celebrated Mass — the first in Florida and the first in what is now the United States. Members of the Timucuan tribe were drawn to the beach by the arrival of the strangers and then stayed to watch the Mass. Afterward, the Spanish invited the Timucuans to join them in a feast to thank Almighty God for their safe arrival. And so Europeans and Native Americans shared a meal together, in a spirit of gratitude for their blessings — and they did so 56 years before the pilgrims' and Wampanoag Indians' celebration in what is now Massachusetts.

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We have all heard the story of the Pilgrims who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts on a ship called the Mayflower. The story goes like this:  They were the first English settlers in America, they came for religious freedom and they had a big feast with Indians, and that was the first Thanksgiving.

 

That is what Chesterton called; “The Myth of the Mayflower.”

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First of all, they were not known as “pilgrims” until about 200 years afterwards. They were  Puritans, a radical Anglican “low church” sect that loathed the “high church” Anglicans that happened to include the King of England. In fact, about 30 years after the Puritans arrived in America, some of their fellow Puritans back in England arranged for King Charles I to have his head chopped off because his wife and children were Catholic.

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Secondly, there were at least nine other British settlements before the Plymouth colony. All but one of them failed, including the first settlement at Plymouth. The Puritans who came to Plymouth in 1620 almost didn’t survive. Half the settlers died the first winter. They were saved by a Native American named Squanto, who taught them how to hunt and fish and grow corn.

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Squanto was a Roman Catholic.

 

In 1614, he had been captured by an English party led by Captain John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) and taken on a ship to Spain where he was to be sold as a slave. He was rescued by some Dominican friars who instructed him in the Catholic faith. He told them he wanted to return to his people in America. They helped him get to England, where he met John Slaney, who taught him English and arranged for him to get to Newfoundland. Squanto served as an interpreter between the English and the Native Americans and crossed the Atlantic six times.  He was never able to return to his own tribe, because they had been wiped out in a plague.

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After he came to the aid of the Plymouth settlers, helping them grow their own food, he arranged for a joint harvest feast with the local Wampanoag tribe. So the classic story of Thanksgiving was started by a Native American Catholic.

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In 1621, the year after the Puritans arrived at Plymouth, another group of English settlers arrived in Ferry, Newfoundland. The land had been granted to George Calvert, the First Baron of Baltimore. Calvert’s son, Cecilius, the Second Baron of Baltimore, was granted another chunk of the New World, which he settled in 1632. He called it Maryland (named for "some woman" whose name was Mary).  England gave this land to George Calvert and his son as compensation for being stripped of his title of Secretary of State. Why had he been stripped of his title? Because he declared that he was a Roman Catholic. Maryland was the first English Catholic settlement in the New World, and one of its founding principles was freedom of religion.

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The Puritans up the coast get all the credit for establishing freedom of religion, but they did not. They were actually quite opposed to the idea. They were anything but tolerant. In fact, it was their intolerance that caused them to come to the new world, not persecution. England was not Puritan enough for them. They did not think the Stuarts had gone far enough to do away with the elements of Catholicism that still remained in the Church of England. Puritan intolerance led to the eventual execution of King Charles I. Puritan intolerance was further demonstrated by a course of events in another Puritan settlement established just six years after the one in Plymouth, just down the road called Salem. It was there that anyone who departed from strict Puritan practice was in danger of being labeled and burned as a witch. Chesterton pointed out that the Puritans lost their belief in priests but kept their belief in witches.

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So Catholics deserve the credit not only for the first Thanksgiving, but for the first real history of religious freedom in America, not the Puritans whom we call Pilgrims. The Puritans separated from the Anglican church because they felt it was still too Catholic. This is perhaps why G.K. Chesterton once said: “In America, they have a feast to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. Here in England, we should have a feast to celebrate their departure.”

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The very heart of Christian worship takes its name from the Greek word expressing thanks. Eucharist means thanksgiving. It goes without saying, then, that thanksgiving is a significant aspect of what the Mass is all about. There is no real separation of church and state where the celebration of Thanksgiving is considered. Citizens of the United States have celebrated Thanksgiving, at least informally, since before the country’s inception.

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Both the Mass and the celebration of Thanksgiving Day call to mind the very necessary reality that, as human beings, we are made to give thanks.

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The late archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George, O.M.I., put it best: “Recognizing that none of us is self-made and unwilling to declare ourselves a cosmic accident, we turn to the Author of all that is and say thanks. In the face of a gift that cannot be matched in return, all one can do is be grateful.”

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Our last words at Mass express our response: “Thanks be to God.” Cardinal George explained their significance, saying that “Gratitude to God shapes our lives, at their beginning and their end. Each moment is a gift, each event unfolds under God’s loving providence.” The challenge for Christians is to live each day in recognition that everything is a gift, chief among which is our salvation. As St. Paul exhorts us in the epistle for this Thanksgiving Mass:

“And whatever you do, in word or in deed,

Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,

Giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

--Father Joseph Tuscan, OFM Cap