“EUCHARISTA 2015”
Lamentations 3: 22-25
Eve of A Day of General Thanksgiving: 25 November Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
Mercy and compassion are qualities of The Lord’s love. They are facets of the jewel of His Grace. He made Adam in a perfect state. The first man and woman would never have worn out, grown old, become sick, or died. They were in God’s communion and thus could never have been consumed. But instead of thanksgiving to their Creator, Sustainer, and Lover, they turned from receiving Him and His bountiful goodness, His bountiful harvest, and His food, to sinful cannibalism…gnawing away at their own selves, egos, desires, and rotten hearts. One either is thankful to God and gratefully receives His nourishment, or one is un-thankful and roots about in the sewer eating excrement.
Were your first parents thankful for what God gave them? What is thanksgiving? Are you really thankful and appreciative of the things that people do for you, give you, and provide you with? No. All our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. We take everyone for granted especially those closest to us. Kyrie Eleison. It isn’t our skin which is leprous it’s our hearts. When you do thank your gift giver, be it spouse, neighbor, or Creator, it’s out of a sense of duty, custom, habit, or guilt. If the Hebrews after being rescued from Egyptian bondage, brought through the sea, fed with Manna, and given pastors such as Moses and Aaron, were sinfully ungrateful, how do you think you rate?
For a Christian to be consumed with gluttony tomorrow afternoon—concupiscence with food, sports, or anticipatory shopping, is both sinful and potentially faith destroying. One can be historically respectful of Pilgrims, helpful Indians, and framers, who to some degree wished for a modicum of religious liberty, without losing fact that every day for a believer needs to be (because it IS) a day of thanksgiving to God. “O give thanks unto The Lord for He is good and His Mercy endureth forever.” And you don’t. Your thanksgiving should be the fear, love, and trust in God above all things. But you’re so ungrateful that all you obsess with is this nation and its temporary political and social decay. The thing you’re most worried about, just as the thing which you most trust in, is your God. How do you give thanks? Repent and believe.
But Christ isn’t trying to nag at you, lecture you, or motivate you to be more appreciative. He has a 10 edged sword to cut you apart and slay you dead in your selfish, self-indulgent, greedy, ungrateful self!
The Apostle’s words to Saint Timothy have law in them when solely looked at through the Decalogue to be sure. But Paul does more than simply admonish he also reports what Christians like Timothy and you do! In Christ you do offer supplications, petitions and prayers for all men, and especially those of the household of faith. In Christ you do offer thanksgiving and praise. You were + Washed, you have been + Loosed, you will be Fed, how can you not say thank you and Hallelujah?
At the end of the day, your day in temporal life and your eternal day in heaven which will never end, Jesus gives thanks for you to His Father. His Eucharista—thanksgiving is yours by Grace. Where you don’t lift up holy hands without wrath and doubting, Jesus lifted up the Holy Hands of The God/Man which were spiked with holes and flesh and blood and gore—again, the gore of Grace! In Christ, every Lord’s day, you even pray for a man who “acts like he’s a king” though he appears more thief, liar, and sanctimonious bully, when you pray that God would endue him with Grace to rule after His good pleasure to the maintenance of righteousness and to hindrance and punishment of wickedness.
How do you give thanks? Believe on His Name, Jesus, Savior, and be gathered by The Holy Ghost Who sanctifies you by His Word in the one, true, church. How do you praise The Lord for His mighty acts and excellent greatness? Receive His first article gifts which He showers on His children because He knows what you need to support this body and life.
The Mercy of The Merciful One, in Word and Water and Body and Blood wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of The Truth.
“It is The Lord’s mercies that [you] are not consumed” because He first consumed sin from you and drained the bitter dregs unto suffering and death; and because you this evening consume His precious Body and pure Blood. He has you wait for Him here at His nuptial hall for His imminent return. He constantly intercedes before The Father’s throne giving thanks for everyone of you by name.
How do you give thanks—Eucharista? By receiving The Eucharist Himself: “take eat; take drink; for the forgiveness of sins.”
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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