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2025-11-27 Homily for Thanksgiving Day – Luke 17:11–19
Homily for Thanksgiving Day – Luke 17:11–19
Circuitous, Ceremonious, Curious: The Path of Gratitude and the Advent
That Begins at the End
Each year on this national day of Thanksgiving, we gather with hearts
full—full of memories, full of blessings, full of prayers, full of plans for
those we love, and yes, sometimes full of emotions we don’t quite know how to
name. But as we listen to today’s Gospel, we discover something important:
Thanksgiving is not just a national holiday. It is a Gospel category,
the very heart of the Eucharist. The word Eucharist
means thanksgiving.
And this Gospel of the ten lepers gives us a pattern for how God often
works:
circuitous, ceremonious, and finally curious,
opening us to the surprising paths of His grace.
1. A Circuitous Path
When I first came to Our Lady of Lourdes, I remember Monsignor Joseph
Petrillo giving me driving directions—all the possible routes I could
take from here to St. Barnabas Medical Center if I were visiting someone.
I could go up Eagle Rock Avenue and make a left on Prospect.
Or I could go down Main Street to Mount Pleasant, take that up to Gregory, and
over to Northfield Avenue.
Or I could go all the way down Main Street and pick up Northfield directly.
This was all before GPS and navigation in the car. I didn’t need GPS—I had
Monsignor Petrillo.
And sometimes Thanksgiving Day feels like that—a circuitous route
just to get here. Maybe you misplaced your keys and had to take a
detour through your apartment. Maybe the traffic was all over the place. But
there are also deeper circuitous routes we take in life.
And Jesus takes such a route today.
Luke tells us that Jesus was “on the way to Jerusalem,” but then adds something
surprising:
He goes north through Samaria and Galilee.
Imagine you’re at the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan this morning, and
you need to get back to West Orange… and then you decide to go north
toward the George Washington Bridge and come back on the other side of the
river. That’s what Jesus does. Ultimately, He’s headed south on the
parkway—toward Jerusalem—but first He goes north.
God does not draw straight lines.
Our lives resemble this.
We go “the long way around,” through unexpected changes in family,
friendships, health, or responsibilities. Some detours we choose; others are
thrust upon us. But these detours are not empty. They are often the very places
where God meets us, precisely because we realize—we are not in control.
I experienced such a detour long before I was thinking about the priesthood.
I was traveling home from Washington, D.C. after a work assignment. This was
the era before smartphones and mobile boarding passes. I got on the plane at
Reagan National Airport with a paper ticket, sat down, and simply wanted to get
home, have dinner with friends, and enjoy a normal weekend. The only priest I
expected to see was at Mass on Sunday—two days later.
Then, unexpectedly, a priest from my hometown parish sat down right
next to me. He wasn’t on vacation; he had been in Washington for a
confidential meeting regarding a major transition in his ministry. As we spoke,
he entrusted me with details that his own parish did not yet know—that he would
soon be leaving for a new assignment in service to the U.S. bishops.
I had not asked for that conversation. I was not discerning priesthood. I
was not thinking about the Church’s internal affairs. But in that circuitous
moment—an unexpected seatmate on a routine flight—God opened a small window
into the priesthood and planted a seed I did not yet understand.
St. John Henry Newman once wrote that God often dispenses blessings “silently
and secretly, so that we do not discern them at the moment except by faith.”
Only later did I realize the airplane seat assignment was a detour I was
supposed to take—God’s invitation to me.
2. A Ceremonious Faith
The Gospel then moves from the circuitous to the ceremonious.
Jesus sends the ten lepers to show themselves to the priests, as the Law
prescribed. This was not an empty formality; it was the ceremony that restored
them to the community.
Ceremony has purpose.
Ritual situates us.
Ritual claims us.
Ritual reminds us who we are—not just as individuals, but as a people.
On this Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks for the rituals that bind us as
families and as a Church—gathering around the table, breaking bread, praying
together, coming to the Eucharist.
Our faith is not simply emotional. It is embodied—in
gestures, words, seasons, and sacraments.
We need this ceremonious dimension—not as a substitute for faith, but as the
soil where faith grows.
And yet, as Scripture shows us today, ceremony alone is not enough.
3. A Curious Heart
Only one leper returns to Jesus—the Samaritan, the outsider, the one
furthest from Jerusalem both geographically and religiously. He alone is curious
enough to return, praising God with a loud voice and falling at Jesus’ feet.
Spiritual curiosity is not idle speculation.
It is the willingness to ask:
“What is God doing here?
Even in this inconvenience?
Even in this detour?”
It is the openness to see blessing where others see interruption.
It is the courage to return, to reconsider, to be transformed.
All ten lepers followed the instructions.
All ten participated in the ceremony.
But only the Samaritan sought the face behind the blessing.
Only he discovers that healing becomes salvation
when gratitude becomes relationship.
So too for us: true Thanksgiving requires this curiosity, this interior
movement that asks:
“Lord, where are You in this?
What grace are You giving me that I cannot yet see?”
4. Gratitude for the
Unexpected
On this Thanksgiving Day, some of us may find ourselves at tables where not
every conversation will be comfortable. Some people may feel like the last ones
we want to see. Yet God’s grace often works through precisely these situations.
The people who challenge us, frustrate us, or remind us of our limitations…
sometimes these are the very places where God is doing a hidden work—
just as He did on that unexpected airplane,
or through the Samaritan who shocked everyone by being the only one to return.
Thanksgiving asks us to be grateful not only for the gifts we recognize,
but also for the graces we do not yet understand.
5. Turning Toward Advent:
The Beginning at the End
And today, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, we stand on the threshold of
Advent.
Advent begins, paradoxically, with the end—
the end of the liturgical year,
the end of time,
the end of life as we know it.
Before turning our gaze toward Bethlehem, the Church reminds us of the Last
Things—judgment, eternity, the coming of Christ in glory.
Why does Advent begin with the end?
Because faith requires trust:
trust that God’s plan is larger than our detours,
trust that what looks like an ending can become a beginning,
trust that God will lead us through the circuitous roads of life
to the home He prepares for us.
As Jesus says in John 14:
“In my Father’s house, there are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for
you.”
Advent invites us to a faith that is more than ceremonious—though ceremony
blesses us—
and more than curious—though curiosity guides us.
Advent invites us to steadfast dedication:
daily prayer,
daily trust,
daily asking,
“Lord, where are You leading me?”
6. Thanksgiving at the Altar
Finally, we return to the Eucharist—the thanksgiving of Christ Himself.
Jesus gives thanks to the Father as He gives us His Body and Blood,
offering His life so ours may be renewed.
Every Mass is our opportunity to turn back like the Samaritan—
praising God, falling at the feet of Jesus, and giving thanks.
Before we go to our Thanksgiving tables today and pray, “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts…,” we first come to this table— the altar— where Christ gives us His gifts.
And so, today we ask for three graces:
·
The grace to see God in the circuitous
paths of our lives.
·
The grace to embrace the ceremonious
beauty of our rituals and worship.
·
The grace to cultivate a curious heart
that returns to Christ daily.
May our Thanksgiving open us to the season of Advent—
where endings give way to beginnings,
and where the God who meets us on every detour
leads us toward the fullness of His life and love.
Amen.
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