I am thankful for many things. Today I note my gratitude to God for a life filled at least with something at least coming close a desire to be virtuous. For family and friends who support, encourage, and correct me. For the opportunity to be in Rome, to study and work and live and pray, and for the opportunities I have to effect significant positive change in people’s lives and even in the global Church. For the glimmers of insight I occasionally have into meaningful things. For the impulse to give thanks for these things rather than presume they are my own… As St. Paul says, “For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7)

Many people will today be “giving thanks” for things and people in their lives – and yet many of them do not believe in God. As the former Archbishop of Philadelphia once pointed out, that is a profoundly embarrassing phenomenon… gratitude to nobody in particular for things not given by anyone at all. We must first of all give thanks to God for His own revelation in our souls, His invitation to know Him.

Happy Thanksgiving… even to my non-American readers!