November 20, 2005
Gobble Gobble

When we were kids, we dressed up in Pilgrim and Indian costumes, learned how to make turkey sounds (gobble gobble), sang songs about our Pilgrim ancestors, and of course, ate the Thanksgiving meal. As I look back with fondness on those childhood days, I realize what lessons came out of that experience.

First, our family was neither Pilgrim by religion or heritage, yet we (at least half of us) took on someone else’s history and culture for a day. Our family was not Indian by religion or culture, yet some of us pretended to be so on that same day. We were multi-lingual (OK, “gobble gobble” isn’t exactly a language, but to us kids it was), and the songs we sang made us one with an American past that was bigger than us.

That’s the way it is with St. Brigid’s on Thanksgiving Day. People from all over the globe gather here to be “American” -- they join as one regardless of whether they are really ancestors of Pilgrims or Indians (although quite a few of our parishioners from Central and South America ARE actually related to Indians). And just as at the first American Thanksgiving different languages were spoken, and different traditions were shared, so too at St. Brigid’s we make a rich offering to God of our cultures and our music.

If you’ve never been to our Thanksgiving Day Mass, why not bring your family this year? You’ll probably find it as challenging and as joyful as our American ancestors found their first Thanksgiving -- challenging, because our celebration invites each person to pray with others who we don’t regularly see next to us in church and we use different languages. Joyful, because we are at our heavenly best when we thank God together as one family. When we arrive in heaven one day, we’ll see folks from every “race, language and way of life” (as one of our Eucharistic Prayers tells us). So Thanksgiving at St. Brigid’s is that glimpse of heaven ahead of time. Now THAT’s something to be thankful for.

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