Tomorrow, we will
celebrate Thanksgiving as a nation, having great feasts with our families and
friends and loved ones. It is a time when we give
thanks for the blessings and the abundance that we have in our lives, in which
we give thanks to God. Yet, there is also a
harsh reality out there. A reality where there are
fears of another terrorist attack, of a general foreign travel advisory issued
to US citizens by our State Dept. A reality where we not
sure where the world is going, where a lot of people have a lot of fear and
uncertainty. I recently saw this quote
from the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who himself was killed by the
Nazi at the end of the Second World War.
Bonhoeffer stated: “God does not
love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal
world, but rather the real world.” Jesus addresses a reality
in the Gospel today when he says that all kinds of bad things will come upon
his followers – they will be seized and persecuted, they will handed over to
the prisons and the synagogues. We are called to be true
to the Gospel in good times and in bad times, in our joys and in our
sufferings. We are called to be a
follower of Jesus no matter what. And
because of our life of discipleship, we may become a target. As we celebrate
Thanksgiving tomorrow, let us thank those who suffered for their faith so that
they could pass down that faith to us.
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