It seems to be quite odd that the person whom we should thank on this Thanksgiving Day is the same individual who wrote the children's song, Mary Had a Little Lamb. Her name was Sarah Josepha Hale, who holds the recognition of being the first woman editor of a major national publication (Godey s Lady's Journal). I guess that Godey s Lady's Journal was the 19th Century's version of Good Housekeeping or Redbook Magazine, offering tips for the women of the time concerning cooking, fashion, and things of that nature.

For seventeen years, from 1846-1863, Hale passionately wrote editorial columns in her woman's magazine about the need for the United States to celebrate a unified holiday of thanks to God for all the graces that he has bestowed on us. Although George Washington declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday in 1789, Hale argued that the United States was in need of some type of annual commemoration, especially during a horrific time of war. She noted that 30 states of the union already celebrated some type of annual Thanksgiving celebration and that the country behooved itself to make this celebration a unified one. Hale concludes,

In a time of national darkness and sore troubles, shall we not recognize that the goodness of God never faileth, and that to our Father in heaven we should always bring the Thanksgiving offering at the ingathering of the harvest? Would it not be of great advantage, socially, nationally, religiously, to have the day of our American Thanksgiving positively settled?

Hale's words ultimately touched the heart of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, who, in 1863, declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Lincoln writes,

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

(And as a side note, do you find it as remarkable as I do that the good folks of the 19th Century seem to rely on the presence of divine in their speeches and daily life in a much more frequent fashion as to their more sophisticated counterparts some 150 years later?)

In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt committed the cardinal sin by moving the celebration of Thanksgiving Day to the Fourth Thursday of the month rather than the last Thursday in order to accommodate retail stores who wished to cash in on another week of Christmas shopping (by the way, how many of you are going to get up at 5:00 a.m. on Friday morning to go shopping? If I am going to get up at 5:00 in the morning to do anything, it isn t going to be shopping). Although this changed created a rift within the states of the union, in 1941 the United States Congress proposed a bill to set the Fourth Thursday of November as the official date for Thanksgiving and President Roosevelt signed the bill into law the same year.

The fact is, Sarah Josepha Hale was correct - we are all obligated to stop, if not every day but at least once a year, to remind ourselves that we are all brothers and sisters in the Lord. We all give thanks to the Lord for the gift of life and the gift of love that has been showered upon us. We remind ourselves that without a benevolent God who gave us life and love, there would be no Thanksgiving or Christmas or time or space. Without God, we would be nothing.

And especially today, we remind ourselves that there are people within our own community who cannot give thanks with the same conviction as we do in these pews, individuals such as widows, orphans, those who suffer sickness and homelessness, those who are homebound and institutionalized. It is our obligation and honor to make sure that these good people know that God's love is just as available to them as it is to us and we do what we can to show them how much we care for them through our prayers and actions. Over the last week or so, you have all been so generous with your donations towards our Food Pantry program, providing this community with non-perishable goods and financial donations that had greatly helped us provide food and supplies for needy families this holiday season. For this we give thanks to you. For this we give thanks to God.

For when we give this thanks, we receive the same blessings and assurances in today s gospel as the one leper who came back to the Lord who gave thanks himself for the gift of health. To those that return back to the Lord, they are assured of the Lord's response of love: Stand up and go - your faith has saved you. May we always be thankful for the presence of God in our lives. This is our prayer.