Special Edition: Happy Thanksgiving!
A reflection and some readings...
Dear Reader:
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We at The Summit have much to be grateful for. Growing from 16 students to 112 in just a handful of years requires a supportive community, lots of new teaching talent, and so much more. Among other things, we’ve been blessed with several families moving to the area for our school, and we were blessed last year with the ability to have mass celebrated in our rented school facilities. These have been great contributions to our school.
Thanksgiving break at The Summit Academy is a welcome time of rest and recharge, along with plenty of recreation. The week begins with basketball scrimmages for middle and upper school teams. Through break we host a community-wide soccer game and an alumni rugby match. The soccer game takes place at our Gordon Road property, the future site of our very own campus. A view from the property:
Of course this break for some will involve traveling, for many cooking, and for still others reading. I’d like to provide several suggestions for Thanksgiving reading that reflect, in their quality and variety, the engagement of the mind, heart, and soul for which we aim at The Summit.
Thomas Aquinas’s Eucharistic Prayer
There are several translations of this prayer, but the point remains: When we talk about thanksgiving, we Catholics begin with the Eucharist (or, in Greek, eucharistia, giving thanks). It is in the Eucharist that Christ is fully present with us to nourish us and bring us into closer relationship with Him. This reading isn’t just to read; it’s also to pray.
We yield Thee thanks, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God. Who not for any merit of ours, but of Thy mercy only, has been pleased to feed us sinners, Thine unworthy servants, with the Precious Body and Blood of Thy Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ. And we beseech Thee, that this Holy Communion may not accuse us unto condemnation but may be to us pardon and salvation. Let us be to us an armor of faith and a shield of good resolution. Let it be to us the riddance of all vices, the killing of all evil desires and longings, and the increase of love and patience, of humility and obedience, and of all virtues; a firm defense against all enemies visible and invisible, a constraining power to purity and holiness. Let it make us always cling closely to Thee, the One, True, and Only God, and end our earthly days in peace. And we pray Thee to bring us to that Heavenly Banquet, where Thou with Thy Son and the Holy Ghost art to Thy Saints true light, everlasting joy, and perfect happiness. Amen.
Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation
Lincoln bequeathed to us some of the greatest American speeches and writings. His Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1864 is a lesser-known work but merits our attention and reflection. We are reminded of the great trials our nation has overcome, as well as the unique blessings it enjoys. The proclamation reads:
It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while he has opened to us new sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working men in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of Freedom and Humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do, hereby, appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day, which I desire to be observed by all my fellow—citizens wherever they may then be as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to Almighty God the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do farther recommend to my fellow—citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of Peace, Union and Harmony throughout the land, which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.
A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Longfellow, a Maine native, was one of those rare artists who is successful in his own time. His poem entitled “Thanksgiving” is excerpted below.
When first in ancient time, from Jubal’s tongue
The tuneful anthem filled the morning air,
To sacred hymnings and elysian song
His music-breathing sehll the minstrel woke.
Devotion breathed aloud from every chord:
The voice of praise was heard in every tone,
And prayer and thanks to Him, the Eternal One,
To Him, that with bright inspiration touched
The high and gifted lyre of heavenly song,
And warmed the soul with new vitality. . . .And have our hearts grown cold? Are there on earth
No pure reflections caught from heav’nly light?
Have our mute lips no hymn, our souls no song?
Let him that in the summer-day of youth
Keeps pure the holy fount of youthful feeling,
And him that in the nightfall of his years
Lies down in his last sleep, and shuts in peace
His dim, pale eyes on life’s short wayfaring,
Praise Him that rules the destiny of man.
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Thanksgiving reflection
Finally, there is a newspaper column written pseudonymously in 1916 by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of Little House on the Prairie. Encouraging gratitude in all times, even when we are hung up on some small matter, she reflected:
We were living on the frontier in South Dakota then. . . . Our nearest and only neighbor was 12 miles away and the store was 40 miles distant. . . .
We would have roast goose for Thanksgiving dinner! “Roast goose and dressing seasoned with sage,” said sister Mary. “No, not sage! I don’t like sage and we won’t have it in the dressing,” I exclaimed. Then we quarreled, sister Mary and I, she insisting that there should be sage in the dressing and I declaring there should not be sage in the dressing, until father returned — without the goose!
I remember saying in a meek voice to sister Mary, “I wish I had let you have the sage,” and to this day when I think of it I feel again just as I felt then and realize how thankful I would have been for roast goose and dressing with sage seasoning — with or without any seasoning — I could even have gotten along without the dressing. Just plain goose roasted would have been plenty good enough.
This little happening has helped me to be properly thankful even tho at times the seasoning of my blessings has not been just such as I would have chosen.
I hope for you and your loved ones a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and break. We will return next week with another edition of A View from The Summit.
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