Dear St. Pat's,

Thanksgiving is a beautiful tradition in America.  The first time I attended a Thanksgiving dinner was back in 1965, when I came from Vietnam and lived with an American family for one year as a foreign exchanged student.  In those days I did not think so much about the meaning of Thanksgiving, aside from the expectation of the family gathering and of the meal with so much delicious food that my American mother prepared. 

The word thanksgiving itself speaks to the awareness that in this changing world we are watched over and cared for, and expresses our gratitude to the Creator who is also the provider and protector .  I, for one, am thankful for this life in America, and I think I may speak for all of us.  Some of us at Saint Patrick's and I did not grow up with the tradition of a Thanksgiving Day, yet we may celebrate the day in our own ways, and each of us may have his or her own reasons for giving thanks.  No matter how we came to live in this part of the world, we know that we did not make it on our own.  Giving thanks to God is the proper Christian attitude, at all times and in all places.

A couple of Sundays ago we read Psalm 43 and heard the psalmist say,

"Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?

And why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God;

for I will yet give thanks to him,

who is the help of my countenance, and my God."

The psalmist seemed to have spent days being depressed and complaining, yet in a moment of awakening he discovered that God had mighty power to save.  Putting one's trust in God can be understood as "waiting for God," and "hanging in there until help comes."

Pretty soon we will celebrate the First Sunday of Advent.  The four Sundays before Christmas make up Advent on our church calendar. The word "Advent" means "coming."   The fact that Advent begins a new year in the church calendar may suggest that once we know that we need to wait for God, and trust in Him, we begin a new spiritual journey. 

Advent speaks to the second coming of Christ.  Since the early days of Christianity, the second coming of Christ has been held dear in the hearts of believers.  In those early days the people thought that the earth was flat, and that when Jesus comes back he would appear from a cloud, so that all humanity would see him at once.  They waited patiently, without seeing him, so they said the second coming of Christ was delayed.  We, too, wait for Christ to come, but we know that the earth is not flat, and we understand that Christ does not have to descend through the clouds to reach us, and that we do not have to wait until the last day.  

As we begin to wait for Christ, Christ already comes to us. That happens when we give thanks to God and begin to listen to his voice calling us his beloved.  Christ comes to us as we offer Him a space in our lives and in our hearts, and acknowledge that all things come of Him.  Tinh+