KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
August 23, 2018
By Thomas Gumbleton
I thought I might start our reflection today by finding out something which I think is quite special and noteworthy. In the second lesson, the passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus where he’s outlining various virtues for us to try to grow into and live according to. And at one point toward the end he says, “Sing and celebrate the Lord in your hearts giving thanks to God always.” Those few words “giving thanks to God,” sometimes is translated as “always be thankful.” That’s what Paul is telling us: always be thankful.
When you look at the original language, it’s even more dramatic, it seems to me, because the what the words are: be eucharists, estotes eucharistountes. Eucharist means thanksgiving, so Paul is saying to let your whole being, every part of you give thanks to God. Why? Because everything we have and are and will be is a gift from God so our whole being should react in total thanksgiving. Every moment, every second of our life should be praise and thanks to God because without God we don’t exist, we’re nothing, never would be, never will be.
God has loved us into being so we need to be eucharists, always thanking God. That, of course, becomes even more clear — the reason why we should thank God in the Gospel lesson where Jesus talks to us about giving his very self as our food and drink: “I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread, drinks my blood will live forever.” Those are very important words today that we need to remember and try to grow in that spirit of thankfulness in our prayers every day — every moment, in a sense, and if we can every day.
But this Sunday, this weekend, it may be somewhat difficult to be thinking about thanking God because of the tragedy that has been exposed about our church during this past week. Archbishop [Allen] Vigneron wrote a long letter to all the priests and another one to the people of the diocese asking us to speak about this. First of all to, I guess, reassure everybody in spite of all the terrible things. If you read any part of that report from the grand jury in Pennsylvania, you know it’s just a sordid, ugly story.
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