To be truly thankful, we must in thanksgiving offer ourselves at this Holy Mass and every Holy Mass to the Father who has offered to us His everything

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. October 10th, 2010

We just heard in our Gospel Acclamation preceding the Gospel the following words, “In all circumstances, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” This verse is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians and it sums up nicely one of the themes of our readings today: our need as creatures to give our Creator profound thanks.

Giving thanks to God is one of the purposes of prayer; it is however, only one of the four traditional purposes of prayer; the other three being adoration, contrition and supplication. Jesus in our Gospel is very much offended that only one of the ten lepers healed returns to give him thanks; Jesus makes a point by saying that this one is a not even a Jew, but a Samaritan?

This Samaritan Leper actually fulfills all the four purposes of prayer; first he along with the other nine voices his supplication before Jesus, “Jesus, Master! Take pity on us.” Because leprosy was seen as a punishment for sins, included implicitly in the supplication is contrition of heart, “take pity on us sinners.” In his return to thank Jesus however, only the Samaritan leper fulfills the other two purposes of prayer, Adoration and thanksgiving. The leper falls on his knees in adoration before Jesus who is God present before him, and there the healed leper praises God in profound adoration and thanksgiving.

In our prayer we must imitate this leper, not only in our thanks to God but also by carrying out the other three purposes of prayer; other wise our thanking God is empty. Our prayer must contain all four aspects, adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication, preferably in that order. When we pray to God our prayer must contain all four; we cannot always be asking for things, we must adore first, then say we’re sorry, and next thank God for all He as already given us, and then lastly, beg Him for what we need according to His Holy Will; notice, asking come last, not first.

This four-fold purpose of prayer also gives us a key to praying the most perfect of all prayers, the Holy Mass. The Holy Mass is the most perfect of prayers because it is the prayer of Jesus’ the Great High Priest and His self-offering to the Father for our sake and for our salvation. We just can't pray as we ought, and so at Mass, Jesus Himself comes down from heaven and prays for us, with us, even in us, if we let Him. As the head of His Mystical Body the Church, He offers Himself anew, for our sake, in a perfect act of adoration for the remissions of our sins, and in doing so offers perfect thanksgiving as our mediator before the Father.

In this, Jesus adores the Father in Spirit and in Truth so we as His Mystical Body, if we are united to our Head, can do so as well. And so at Mass if we are going to participate in the Eucharist actually and fully, we must bring each one of these four purposes of prayer to our prayer at Mass. By the way, there is a really easy way to remember these four purposes of prayer and in the proper order, just remember the word A.C.T.S.—ADORATION, CONTRITION, THANKSGIVING and SUPPLICATION. ACTS, is what we creatures must do as we pray, especially when we pray at Mass; and even more importantly, as we pray the Mass.
Let’s take a quick look at each of these.

First adoration. The fact that God is our Creator and we are his creatures is the motive for the first and primary purpose of all prayer, especially praying the Mass. King Naaman in our first reading acknowledges that there is “no God in all the earth” but the true God of Israel; and the Samaritan who returns to give thanks to Jesus falls down in worship at Our Lord’s feet.

The Holy Mass makes truly present, Jesus who is God among us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. If at the name of Jesus every knee should bend what about at the very person of Jesus. The Eucharist is the very person of Jesus and in adoration we should fall on our knees, probably even our faces before Him. Before Jesus’ true presence in the Eucharistic, we should imitate the leper and bow down in worship before our Lord and our God, literally offering ourselves in a loving oblation of thanksgiving to the Father who has given us His everything in the Holy Eucharist, which is His Son Jesus, the fullness of the Father’s riches.

Next is the prayer of Contrition. Contritely falling on our knees before the God of all Mercies is a prerequisite for our prayers to be heard by God; it is likewise the prerequisite for both our individual prayer and our prayer at the Holy Mass. At each Mass we should call to mind our sins and cry out to our Lord, “I confess to Almighty God…that I have sinned, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault… which is another way of saying, “God, be merciful to me a poor sinner!” We are in God’s spiritual presence always, but at Holy Mass we are before Jesus Crucified, where we can like the leper literally fall on our knees in heartfelt contrition before Him hanging on the cross for our sins.

The third part of our acts at Mass is T, for Thanksgiving. As people of faith we come together in order to give God Thanksgiving because we realize and acknowledge that God is first of all our Omnipotent Creator who has brought us and the entire universe into being; moreover he sustains everything in being. Think about it, if God stopped thinking about us even for an iota of a second we would ceased to exist. Everything we are and have is a gift from God. And if that wasn’t enough God sent His only Son to suffer and die for our sins so that we might be saved, and even more, through the Holy Spirit sent by this Son, come to share in God’s own divine life…Divinized, that is come to share in God’s own Divinity…image! In faith, we must then constantly give thanks to God because we realize that all that we are and all that we have is a gift from him and that any good we do is because of His grace; we are beloved sons and daughters of the Father.

One final point on the T of thanksgiving. What intensity of thanksgiving we should give that we can actually receive this Jesus at Holy Communion. We must, must spend that time after receiving Jesus to kneel at our pew thanking the Father and the Son for such an awesome, incredible gift, to be able to receive our Lord and God into our bodies and souls. Not to do so would be a great sin; to leave Mass early without taking this time for thanksgiving after communion, at least not without a very serious reason, would show a total lack of graciousness, much like the other nine lepers. To really show our thankfulness we could also stay for just a couple of minutes after Mass as a way of giving thanks for the blessing of even being able to be at Mass in the first place... “Blessed are we who have been called to the Wedding feast of the Lamb.”

And finally, the last purpose of prayer at Mass is Supplication, the S, of ACTS. Supplication is also known as petition. The ten lepers all cried out to Jesus: “Have pity on us?” Knowing that God is All-Good, All-Loving and All-Powerful, we can call upon Him with confidence to assist us, our loved ones and the whole world in our many needs. In the Our Father at Mass we ask for all that we could possibly need from a Father who already knows what we need, and so will give us, if we ask, only those good things we need, not necessarily those things we want.
And what is our basic need?

Our basic need is to beg that, God’s Will be done on earth as it is in heaven; in this we ask for God’s grace and strength, given to us through Jesus in the Eucharist, to deny our own will, sacrificing it on the altar in order to live on earth as the saints and angels do in heaven. To deny our will and live the Will of God, this is true freedom. If we don’t learn to live God’s will here on earth, how do we expect to live it forever in eternity?

The Holy Mass is the ultimate prayer for us creatures; it is the best way for us to give Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication to our God. Too many Catholics have lost the fullness of the faith and so have failed to realize what we have really been given in the Holy Eucharist; so how can they be thankful?. So many don’t even partake in the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, and so fail to give proper thanksgiving to God by keeping holy the Sabbath day, the day set aside for our worship of the one True God. If we really believed in the Holy Eucharist, we would crawl on our hands and knees for miles to get to Holy Mass, and even more, even if it meant our martyrdom.

Only one leper, and a non-Jew Samaritan at that, returned to give thanks to God for His goodness, we as Catholics cannot be like the nine other Jews and fail to give our God thanks for the great gift of the Holy Mass and for the great gift of Himself in the Holy Eucharist—God among us. If we fail to give thanks, then the kingdom of God will be taken away from us and given to others who will be more appreciative than we. God loves us, but He will not force His love on anyone. Only those who humble themselves in adoration before Him with contrite and thankful hearts and do not take His greatest of all gifts, His Son in the Holy Eucharist, for granted, only those will enter into an eternal union of joy with Him, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

To be truly thankful, we must in thanksgiving offer ourselves at this Holy Mass and every Holy Mass to the Father who has offered to us His everything through the gift of His Son; this is the true meaning of Eucharist. Mass is the Wedding of all weddings. Here God through Jesus the Bridegroom says, "I Do" when through the priest, Jesus again offers His Body and Blood in sacrifice on the altar for the sake of His bride the Church, each one of us. Then he wishes to consummates this vow of His, by giving us the gift of Himself, His flesh and blood at Communion.

If our communion is to bear fruit by it being a consummation of our soul with Gods, then we too must give Him our "I do" that is the gift of our complete selfs to Him in return. How" By giving Jesus a complete gift of ourselves by an act of our will, interiorly placing ourselves on the paten to be offered with Him in a sacrifice of praise and adoration to the Father of Mercies.

If we fail to give God the gift of ourselves, in thanksgiving for the gift of His complete self to us, then we become like a bride at a wedding who says, "I do" at her wedding, but interiorly doesn't want to give herself to her husband completely and totally for life, and so really means, "I don't." This marriage is never validly consummated because she failed to truly love her spouse by giving the gift of herself to Him.

Let us ask our Lady, to place our hearts on the paten at this Holy Mass, to help us cut any strings the may be attached which prevent us from offering it fully to God in order to be wedded to Him. Let us ask her to obtain for us the grace to live our self-offering and our union with God in all of the actions of our daily lives; then we will show by our lives that we are truly thankful.