‘Jesus Christ . . . is also the foundation of hope.’ Sunday Reflections, 1st Sunday of Advent, Year C

 

Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee

Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]

.

And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves . . . (Luke 21:25; today’s gospel).

We begin Year C, which highlights St Luke's Gospel

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, [England & Wales], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Luke 21:25-28, 34-36 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

Jesus said to his disciples:

“And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

 

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Conditor Alme Siderum (Creator of the Stars of Night)

An ancient Advent hymn sung by the Christendom College Choir & Schola Gregoriana

Pope Benedict XVI in Auschwitz, 28 May 2006

[Wikipedia; photo]

The God in whom we believe is a God of reason - a reason, to be sure, which is not a kind of cold mathematics of the universe, but is one with love and with goodness (Pope Benedict in Auschwitz). 

Pope Benedict's Angelus Talk on the First Sunday of Advent, 29 November 2009. [I have highlighted some parts.]

Dear Brothers and Sisters

This Sunday, by the grace of God, a new Liturgical Year opens, of course, with Advent, a Season of preparation for the birth of the Lord. The Second Vatican Council, in the Constitution on the Liturgy, affirms that the Church 'in the course of the year... unfolds the whole mystery of Christ from the Incarnation and Nativity to the Ascension, to Pentecost and the expectation of the blessed hope of the Coming of the Lord'. In this way, 'recalling the mysteries of the redemption, she opens up to the faithful the riches of her Lord's powers and merits, so that these are in some way made present for all time; the faithful lay hold of them and are filled with saving grace' (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 102). The Council insists on the fact that the centre of the Liturgy is Christ, around whom the Blessed Virgin Mary, closest to him, and then the martyrs and the other saints who 'sing God's perfect praise in Heaven and intercede for us' (ibid., n. 104) revolve like the planets around the sun.

This is the reality of the Liturgical Year seen, so to speak, 'from God's perspective'. And from the perspective, let us say, of humankind, of history and of society what importance can it have? The answer is suggested to us precisely by the journey through Advent on which we are setting out today. The contemporary world above all needs hope; the developing peoples need it, but so do those that are economically advanced. We are becoming increasingly aware that we are all on one boat and together must save each other. Seeing so much false security collapse, we realize that what we need most is a trustworthy hope. This is found in Christ alone. As the Letter to the Hebrews says, he 'is the same yesterday and today and for ever' (Heb 13: 8). The Lord Jesus came in the past, comes in the present and will come in the future. He embraces all the dimensions of time, because he died and rose; he is 'the Living One'. While he shares our human precariousness, he remains forever and offers us the stability of God himself. He is 'flesh' like us and 'rock' like God. Whoever yearns for freedom, justice, and peace may rise again and raise his head, for in Christ liberation is drawing near (cf. Lk 21: 28) as we read in today's Gospel. We can therefore say that Jesus Christ is not only relevant to Christians, or only to believers, but to all men and women, for Christ, who is the centre of faith, is also the foundation of hope. And every human being is constantly in need of hope. 

Dear brothers and sisters, the Virgin Mary fully embodies a humanity that lives in hope based on faith in the living God. She is the Virgin of Advent: she is firmly established in the present, in the 'today' of salvation. In her heart she gathers up all past promises, and encompasses the future. Let us learn from her in order to truly enter this Season of grace and to accept, with joy and responsibility, the coming of God in our personal and social lives.

+++

The Visitation

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

Three years ago on 24 November I was travelling on a bus here in Ireland. I overheard a passenger say to another person, It's Christmas now. Not quite. There was still a full month to go before the beginning of the Church's Christmas Season begins on the evening of 24 December either with the Vigil Mass in the early evening or, more commonly, with the Mass During the Night, formerly known as the Midnight Mass.

Advent is the liturgical season that has been largely sidelined, even in Catholic institutions such as schools which usually hold Christmas parties before Christmas has even begun. In my last few years in the Philippines I tried, with some success, to have these parties called Advent parties. Some groups I was associated with adopted the term while others compromised with the 'Pre-Christmas' party. I reminded them that a wedding banquet takes place after the wedding and a baptismal party takes place after the birth and baptism of the child.

In El Greco's painting of the Visitation above we see two women, Mary and St Elizabeth, vibrant with a dance of life, each carrying a child in her womb. Each was preparing for the birth of her child. And the young Mary, in the early stages of pregnancy, went specifically to be of help to her much older relative who was, according to tradition, about six months later in her pregnancy. Mary wanted to help Elizabeth prepare for the birth of St John the Baptist.

In the opening sentence of his Angelus talk Pope Benedict states clearly that Advent is a Season of preparation for the birth of the Lord.

In the weekday Masses in the earlier part of Advent we listen to a prophecy from the Old Testament and then a gospel reading that shows how that prophecy has been fulfilled with the coming of Jesus. This is meant to bring us hope for the future, that God who came into the world more than 2,000 years ago as a human being and is now risen from the dead will continue to be with us as individuals and as a community as we journey towards eternal life.

And Mary continues to bring Jesus her Son to us and to lead us to her Son, in accordance with the will of the Father. Pope Benedict's Angelus message ends with these beautiful words: In her heart she gathers up all past promises, and encompasses the future. Let us learn from her in order to truly enter this Season of grace and to accept, with joy and responsibility, the coming of God in our personal and social lives.

Ad te Domine, Alessandro Scarlatti 

Antiphona at introitum  Entrance Antiphon Cf Ps 24[25]:1-3

 

Ad te levavi animan meam, Deus meus,

To you, I lift up my soul, O my God.

in te confido, non erubescam.

In you, I have trusted, let me not be put to shame.

Neque irrideant me inimici mei,

Nor let my enemies exult over me;

etenim universi qui te exspectant non confundentur.

and let none who hope in you be put to shame.

American Thanksgiving Day

I'm posting this on American Thanksgiving Day. I am grateful for the Thanksgiving Days I spent in the USA, for the many American friends I have and for the wonderful hospitality I have received in the USA while studying and visiting there. I wish readers of this blog who celebrate today, a great family day where the stranger is welcome, a Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Below is a lovely song written for Johnny Cash by Josef  Anderson.

Thanksgiving Prayer

Sung by Johnny Cash for whom the song was written by Josef Anderson

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.' Sunday Reflections, Solemnity of Christ the King, Year A

The Last Judgement, Michelangelo 

[Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Matthew 25:31-46 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

Jesus said to his disciples:

 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

 

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

St Elizabeth of Hungary 

Sándor Liezen-Mayer [Web Gallery of Art]

In November 1974 some members of the Praesidium of the Legion of Mary of which I was spiritual director came to me and told me of two starving children, a brother and sister, that they had come across on home visitation. The Legionaries were students in the college department of what was then Immaculate Conception College, Ozamiz City, where I was chaplain. At the time ICC was run by the Columban Sisters. It is now La Salle University, under the care of the De La Salle Brothers.

We arranged with the parents to take the two children to the local government hospital. When I saw Linda, as I will call her, I thought she was a malnourished eight-year-old. I was utterly shocked when I learned that she was twelve. Her brother, whom I'll call Nonoy, was five. His ribs were sticking out and his stomach severely bloated. The eldest in the family, a girl aged 13 or 14, showed no signs of malnutrition. This was the first time I had ever met anyone with signs of starvation. I never discovered why the children were in such a state.

After a few days Linda began to shyly smile and slowly got a little better, due to the nourishment and attention she was getting. But Nonoy showed no signs of improvement. He died two days before Christmas, without once smiling. We buried him on Christmas Eve.

Linda was able to go home and on at least one occasion we took her on an outing. She was still very small for her age but always cheerful whenever we met her. However, the severe malnutrition had taken its toll and she died in September 1976 while I was at home in Ireland.

St Martin and the Beggar

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

Today's Gospel makes me both fearful and hopeful.

Fearful, because Jesus speaks such harsh language: Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. This is not 'the Church of nice'.

Hopeful, because Linda and Nonoy will be there at the Last Judgment to speak on my behalf.

St Martin de Porres OP 

[Wikipedia]

This portrait was painted during his lifetime or very soon after his death, hence it is probably the most true to his appearance.

During November the Church honours three saints noted for their extraordinary love for the poor, St Martin de Porres (1579 - 1639) on the 3rd, St Martin of Tours (316 - 397) on the 11th and St Elizabeth of Hungary (1207 - 1231) on the 17th. These three gave of their very self. These exemplified in their lives what Jesus is teaching us in today's gospel.

El Greco is one of many artists who have depicted the scene of St Martin of Tours, then a young soldier and preparing for baptism, giving half of his cloak in the depths of winter to a beggar clad only in rags. The following night, the story continues, Martin in his sleep saw Jesus Christ, surrounded by angels, and dressed in the half of the cloak he had given away. A voice bade him look at it well and say whether he knew it. He then heard Jesus say to the angels, 'Martin, as yet only a catechumen, has covered me with his cloak.' Sulpicius Severus, the saint's friend and biographer, says that as a consequence of this vision Martin 'flew to be baptized'.

Sándor Liezen-Mayer in his painting of St Elizabeth of Hungary above, shows her protecting a young mother and baby with her cloak. The saint herself was a young mother. She married at 14, bore three children and was widowed at 20. The painting reminds me of a beautiful Irish blessing, Faoi bhrat Mhuire thú/sibh ('May thou/you be protected by the cloak of Mary'). The young saint, who was only 24 when she died, followed the example of St Francis, with the blessing of her husband, lived very simply and served the poor and the sick each day personally and ate with them at the same table.

Shrine of St Martin de Porres in Lima 

[Wikipedia]

St Martin de Porres, born outside of marriage and of mixed blood, learned some of the medical arts by working with a barber/surgeon in his young days. He devoted his life as a Dominican lay brother to caring for the sick, whether they were rich or poor. It was mostly the latter who came to him and whom he went looking for. Like St Francis he had a special closeness to animals and people brought these to him to be healed. He is often depicted carrying a broom, with a dog, a cat and a mouse at his feet eating from the same plate. 

These three saints from different social backgrounds wrestled with situations we wrestle with today. They spent themselves in bringing about the Kingdom of God by serving the very poorest. St Martin of Tours, who like St Elizabeth was born in Hungary, asked himself as a soldier if it was proper to engage in battle, where he would kill others. Wikipedia tells us: Regardless of whether or not he remained in the army, academic opinion holds that just before a battle with the Gauls at Borbetomagus (now Worms, Germany), Martin determined that his faith prohibited him from fighting, saying, 'I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.' He was charged with cowardice and jailed, but in response to the charge, he volunteered to go unarmed to the front of the troops. His superiors planned to take him up on the offer, but before they could, the invaders sued for peace, the battle never occurred, and Martin was released from military service.

Conscientious objection doesn't only concern those called to join an army. A Swedish midwife,  Ellinor Grimmark, was fired in 2014 for refusing to do abortions. This is an area where, more and more, individuals will have to make choices that may involve losing their jobs, or even worse. (In 2017 a Swedish court ruled against Ellinor Grimmark).

The world is still overwhelmed with the needs of those trapped in poverty, victims of wars, of natural calamities. Pope Francis has spoken of the Church as being 'a field hospital'. He has asked priests and others to know 'the smell of the sheep'. St Elizabeth of Hungary and St Martin de Porres immersed themselves in that every day, seeing in each one they served Jesus Christ himself. And those they took care of, whether they were aware of it or not, were being served by Jesus himself through those saints and through the many others down the centuries who have been doing the same.

I am certain that Linda and Nonoy will hear Jesus say to them, Come, you who are blessed by my Father . . . I hope and pray that they and others like them who have crossed my path down the years will put in a good word for me so that I will hear Jesus say the same to me.

Christus Vincit! Christus Regnat! Christus Imperat!

Christ Conquers! Christ Rules! Christ Commands!

This very ancient Latin hymn, which is a litany, is also known as Laudes Regiae. In the video above it is sung in St Mary's Cathedral, Tokyo.

Extraordinary Form of the Mass

Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) 

This Sunday, 22 November, is the Twenty-fourth and Last Sunday after Pentecost in the calendar that uses the TLM.

The complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 11-22-2020, if necessary).

Epistle: Colossians 1:9-14. Gospel: Matthew 24:13-35.

St Columban's Day

23 November 

At the Crypt of St Columban, Bobbio, Italy, June 2015

Be helpful when you are at the bottom of the ladder and be the lowest when you are in authority . . . Be submissive to good, unbending to evil, gentle in generosity, untiring in love, just in all things. Be respectful to the worthy, respectful to the poor. Be mindful of favours, unmindful of wrongs. Be a lover of the ordinary man, and don't wish for riches, but cool down excitement and speak your mind.

From a letter of St Columban to a young disciple, c. AD. 610.

Happy St Columban's Day to my fellow Columbans and to our benefactors!

Authentic Beauty

Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.

Pope Benedict XVI meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel, 21 November 2009.

The Promise of Living

Composed by Aaron Copland, arranged by John Williams 

Words by Horace Everett

Happy American Thanksgiving Day!

26 November

  

A Thanksgiving Day 'Thank you' from a Columban on the USA-Mexico border

May I wish all my American readers a Happy Thanksigivng Day. I have been blessed to have celebrated the holiday a number of times in the USA.



Fr Bill Morton, an American Columban working in El Paso, Texas, across the border from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where Australian Columban Fr Kevin Mullins and Irish Columban Fr Michael Donnelly work in one of the most violent areas caught up in the drug war, thanks those who support the work of Columbans. Thanksgiving Day in the USA is a very special holiday, one centred very much on the family and one that invites people to thank God for the many blessings we have.

Father Morton had an unusual path to the priesthood. He found his vocation partly through a 'Born Again' girlfriend. We published this interview in the November-December 2003 issue of Misyon.

Change of Plan

Fr Bill Morton's first job was as an air traffic controller. Later he became a Columban missionary priest. In this interview, he tells how that happened.

Q. What is your family background?

A. I was born into a large Catholic family in Philadelphia in 1952. Frequent discussion about faith, politics and social issues around the dinner table, regular attendance at Sunday Mass and recitation of the family rosary were buttressed by lived values of hospitality to anyone who came to our door. After secondary school, I enlisted in the Navy and qualified as an air traffic controller.

Q. Was it a stressful job?

A. At times. On one occasion when I was in training at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida I cleared a plane on to the main runway when all of a sudden an A-7 from the aircraft carrier Lexington requested an emergency landing. I had to clear him to land on the crosswind runway and as he touched down I saw him bounce on one tyre, which burst and then bounce back on the other wheel and that tyre burst as well. The plane spun off the runway into the dirt. My heart was in my mouth. The canopy popped open and, thank God, the pilot was OK.

Q. Was your religion important to you during those years?

A. As a young man of 18, in a new place without the influences of family and community I began to drift. I rarely went to Mass and seldom thought about God. I went to bars and nightclubs, drank and smoked heavily and experimented with drugs. At the same time, a man named Jim in my air traffic control unit used to speak to me about Christ, leave little pamphlets in my mailbox and invite me to go to his church.

Life in the fast lane was leaving me empty and longing for something and so I began to attend church and eventually had a conversion experience. I told my parents I had been 'born-again' and was no longer a Roman Catholic. When I went home on vacation there was friction in the family over my 'conversion.' My father said, ‘You're no born-again Christian; you're a fallen-away Catholic!’ They invited a well-known religious woman to the house and together tried to convince me to return to the fold. They were all seated in the living room and I at the top of the stairs armed with my Dake's Concordance, an evangelical Bible designed to refute Catholic doctrine.

Q. Were their efforts to convince you successful?

A. No. Back in Pensacola I became even more involved in the Church of the Open Bible. We worked with the youth and started a Christian coffee house and a Jesus rock group. I would pick up the teenagers in my Volkswagen mini-bus for Sunday services and our Friday night coffee house called Freedom Road.

It was a kind of hippie type thing, a very casual atmosphere where we mixed music with Scripture and preaching. We invited the kids to accept Jesus and receive counsel about family, drug and other problems. It was a joyful and creative time for me and deepened my sense of mission.

Q. How do you look back on those years?

A. I have remained friends with Jim, who witnessed to me, and I still delight in telling him I would not have become a Catholic missionary priest without that profound experience in the evangelical church. Through it I developed a more personal relationship with Christ and an appreciation of the Scriptures. I overcame my Catholic reticence to share faith and I developed a much more outgoing approach.

Q. What then brought you back to the Catholic Church?

A. Though I agreed with and experienced personally this relationship with Jesus, certain behaviours like smoking, drinking and swearing were stressed as litmus tests of Christian life. There was a lot of quoting of Scripture and arguments about who was saved and who was not. I began to think of the Catholics I knew who didn't quote much Scripture, who smoked or drank, but who were also generous, compassionate and non-judgmental people.

I asked myself: ‘If Jesus came back whose butt would he be kicking?' I concluded that it would more likely be my own, because of my self-righteousness, rather than the man on the street with his bottle.

I was madly in love with one of the girls who sang in our Christian rock group. She had been raised Protestant and one day she asked if we could go to a Catholic Mass. We went to a Saturday evening Mass at St Mary's and it was a lively celebration with guitars and songs and a young, Irish priest who preached with fervour and humour. Though still very much a member of the Church of the Open Bible I had a fleeting ‘I could do that’ thought about the priest.

My girlfriend enjoyed the visit and so we began to go each Saturday evening and then to the Open Bible on Sunday morning.

My mother had also written me a very challenging letter, quoting John 6, and asking me how those who claim to interpret the Bible literally understand the Eucharist. I didn't get any convincing answers and began to hunger to receive again in the Catholic way.

Though I had always disliked confession as a youth I began to long too to hear those words of pardon and absolution and finally made up my mind to seek out a priest. Around this time my girlfriend suggested that we break off for a while to get things into perspective. This upset me at first but thoughts of priesthood and mission continued to float around in my head.

Q. Why did that happen?

A. My process of conversion was liberating me spiritually, psychologically and socially. I had always wanted to fit in, to be liked by others. Now I began to live out what I perceived as the values of Christ, living from within whether others liked it or not. I was becoming the person I had been created to be.

Mission came from my desire to have others share this freedom and joy that God had given me. A year or more before I came back to the Catholic Church I saw a Columban ad in the Navy Times newspaper. The ad said simply, 'I bribe you with uncertainty and I challenge you with defeat.' I cut it out and put it in my wallet although I'd never heard of the Columbans.

Later, when I returned to full communion with the Church I wrote to the Columbans enquiring about the missionary priesthood. When I told my evangelical friends about this emerging call some were very upset. It was a painful experience to break with people who had become close friends.

Q. After your ordination as a Columban priest in 1985 you were assigned to Taiwan. Was that another drastic change of culture and outlook?

A. During my years of formation and early priesthood, I had changed from being a Protestant fundamentalist to a Catholic fundamentalist. I was always prepared to argue, to prove what was true from Scripture or Church teaching.

Assigned to Taiwan I discovered that the people in general thought there was no difference between Catholics, Protestants, Mormons or any of the other groups. I saw how the Holy Spirit could work also outside of any Christian church.

One example was the great kindness of my friend's mother when I became ill. Mrs Chen didn't know me well and was not a Catholic. In the mornings I would see her offering incense to the Chinese gods of the sky and the mountains. Her charity and hospitality to a stranger, a foreigner, made me think the Spirit was here and working.

Many of my certainties about life and religion were shake-up and I had to reconstruct my way of seeing things. Cross-cultural experience deepened my conversion.

Q. Now you work on the US/Mexican border. What are you doing there?

A. If Taiwan challenged me to reshape what was going on in my head, the poverty that I saw in Juarez and on the US/Mexican border forced me to look at what was going on in my heart.

I wanted to offer service to those people. I felt the need to become involved, to be in solidarity instead of just talking or writing about it.

I see myself, too, as a bridge person between the two countries. Those of us who work on the border are not lone rangers. We can help build bridges.

We invite people to come here and experience the Third World on their own doorstep. Many theologians today insist that there is urgent need for mission in the First World.

It is there that many of the world's most serious problems and injustices have their origin. United States individuals and groups that visit are challenged by the poverty and injustice but even more, they are evangelized by the faith, resilience and sense of community of the people here.

In this way I see the border ministry as a way of being on mission to the First World, to my own people.

Of course I trust that there are young people on both sides of the border who are hearing the call to be Columban missionaries.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to American readers!

Last photo of President Abraham Lincoln

This post is almost the same as the one I used a year ago. However I've included some information about the close ties between the Columbans and the USA. I am very grateful to my American readers and wish everyone in the USA an abundance of God's blessings on this special day, of which I have such happy memories from my years of study near New York City from 1968 till 1971 before coming to the Philippines.

Thanksgiving Day is a great family day in the USA. It's a day when Americans, second to none in hospitality in my experience, welcome strangers to their home. Americans joined the Columbans almost as soon as we were formally established in 1918. We were invited to set up our American headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, by Archbishop Jeremiah Harty, who had served as the first non-Spanish Archbishop of Manila, from 1903 to 1916, when he was transferrred to Omaha. An Irish-American, Archbishop Harty was succeeded in Manila by Irishman Archbishop Michael O'Doherty, who invited the Columbans to Manila in 1929. It's an interesting fact that the first two post-Spanish archbishops of Manila played such a vital role in the early days of the Missionary Society of St Columban.

In addition, the Catholics of the United States have been exceedingly generous in supporting the work of the Columbans down the years. We Columbans are grateful to them for that.

From the seminary in Ireland I went to study near New York City in September 1968. I was astonished at the number of invitations I received from fellow students, none of whom were priests, to join their families for Thanksgiving Day, which is observed on the fourth Thursday of November. President Lincoln's proclamation of 1863, set aside the last Thursday of the month but it is now observed on the fourth Thursday. It became a federal holiday only in 1941.

As we try to come to terms with the awful massacre in Maguindanao last Monday and other ongoing violence perhaps we can learn from the great American president. Abraham Lincoln was inspired to make his proclamation in the middle of the civil war, or War Between the States, as it is often called, that engulfed the USA from 1861 to 1863. Perhaps we too need to turn to God in thanksgiving for what God has given the Philippines and honor his bounty.

To all our readers in the USA or with American connections:

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Thanksgiving Proclamation — 1863
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the over ruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with a sure hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the holy scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.

We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven, we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God 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 at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

First known photo of Abraham Lincoln

Happy Thanksgiving Day to all Americans!

First known and last photos of President Abraham Lincoln

Thanksgiving Day is a great family day in the USA. It's a day when Americans, second to none in my experience in hospitality, welcome strangers to their home.

President Lincoln's proclamation below is surely a wise document.

Thanksgiving Proclamation — 1863
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the over ruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with a sure hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the holy scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.

We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven, we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God 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 at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.