Getting Ready to Pray                     

It will soon be “Thanksgiving weekend” here in the United States. That day is a family-feast centered around a beautiful table. Relatives join together from great distances to give thanks.

These greetings are only verbal sometimes, but also showing up and relating and partaking are signs of knowing we have a home, a family where there is love, forgiveness, reunion, and of course, a wonderful meal.

It is a ritual celebration, usually with the same traditional food, same relatives and friends, all trying to say thanks to each other for mainly, well, just belonging, for being wanted, for being around.

Some Thoughts 

As we prepare for the Solemnity of Christ the King, where we gather together in a thanksgiving ritual, we can pray as well in the same spirit.

We prepare by reflecting the ways God has labored to bring us to a fuller sense of creation: our own creation. We can reach out and touch the little and large creations around us which support our life’s experience.

The Eucharist is a thanksgiving celebration too. Like the celebration of Thursday, it does take preparation to enjoy more fully what we are doing. Sometimes it does take a meal to make a family.