This week families are preparing for our national holiday by buying a turkey and all the trimmings to go with it: dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries, green beans, sweet potato casserole, dinner rolls, and then desserts. I will not name those as I may be making you hungry just thinking about the feast on Thursday! It is a time for families to gather and give thanks. The thanksgiving should begin way before the holiday when we are too busy to just sit down and reflect on the many things we have to be thankful for in our daily lives and even more if we start naming all the priceless gifts we have been given: our health, our sight, hearing, sense of taste and smell, our ability to think, remember, walk, talk, make friends, enjoy life, and then our family, our faith, our education, our country with all its beauty and freedom, etc. Some may want to thank for concrete things like a warm sweater on a cold morning, a cup of tea with a friend, the smile of a child, the smell of a wood fire, roasting marsh-mellows in front of the fireplace, the sound of laughter, the joy of freedom, etc. I think we all need to take time and go back to thank God for his many gifts to us. I especially want to thank for all the persons who have helped me to be the person I am today. They are many so I will begin now to recall them and let you do the same.
This giving thanks is what Thanksgiving is all about so let us be filled with gratitude. It will also be a good preparation for Advent which begins on Sunday.
2 comments:
Hi Helen. I have a niece who is visiting an RSCJ community in Florence, Italy discerning a vocation. However, she told me they wear the old habit and live in cloister. Is this part of the same Society? Do you know anything about them?
Hope you're well.
Carol Lafferty
Dear Carol,
Our house in Florence left the Society as those who stayed there found all the changes after Vatican II too much for them. It was a painful process and took a long time but they continue to be a cloister community and use the Constitutions of 1815 and did not accept the ones of 1982 that were written in response to the Church's call for renewal and have the Church's approval. I would hope she would also visit another one of our convents before making her decision as we still also have the Constitutions of 1815, the same charism, and the same love of prayer, etc. I know some want a cloistered life, but our vocation is to be both active and contemplative!
Love and prayer, Helen
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