When we pray, praise is fittingly accompanied by thanksgiving. “Therefore, our God, we give you thanks and we praise the majesty of your name” (1 Chronicles 29:13). While praise is the form of prayer which recognizes, lauds, and glorifies God for His sake, thanksgiving is the form of prayer which expresses our gratitude for what God has done.
In fact, the Greek word expressing thanks is at the center of our Christian worship. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist–derived from the Greek eucharistia meaning “thanksgiving”–he established it as an act of thanks. The two substances of bread and wine are also intended as symbols of gratitude. As foreshadowing to the covenant Jesus sealed with his flesh and blood on the night before his crucifixion, the Priest Melchizedek offered bread and wine to thank God the Creator when he bestowed blessings upon Abraham (Genesis 14:18-20).
Our entire Mass is a prayer of thanksgiving. In their document The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states: “To worship God on Sundays, then, is not the mere observance of a rule but the fulfillment of our identity, of who we are as members of the Body of Christ. Participation in the Mass is an act of love.”
Considering that Jesus Christ gave his entire body, blood, soul, and divinity to us, the just response is to offer ourselves in thanksgiving to him. Saint Peter Julian writes, “Belong entirely to God through love, entirely to your neighbor through a gracious charity, entirely to the divine Eucharist by the offering and sacrifice of your whole self.”
When you receive and adore the Most Blessed Sacrament, appreciate the tremendous privilege we have to join our thanks with Christ’s sacrificial offering and to unite in communion with God and with one another. Use those precious moments after you receive Holy Communion to revere Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist and to express your love and thanksgiving to him. Saint John Vianney describes, “When we leave the altar rails we are as happy as the Magi would have been if they had been able to carry off the Infant Jesus.”
This week, share your gratitude every time you praise and petition God through prayer. Treat each and every Sunday, the Lord’s Day, like a holiday of thanksgiving. Rather than focusing on what you can get from attending Mass, focus on what you can give–specifically, your gratitude to God. Rejoice in the words we recite at Mass: “Thanks be to God!”
