Dear Brothers and Sisters: 

In October of 1864, President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring the fourth Thursday of November Thanksgiving Day. In his original proclamation he wrote:

“…I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.”

In March of the previous year, President Lincoln also declared a national day of prayer and fasting.  In that proclamation, he wrote:

“And, insomuch as 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 but 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 behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

During the terrible plague of our country’s Civil War, President Lincoln urged our country never to forget the God who created us, the God who bestowed his blessings upon us, and the God who should always be deserving of our thanks. Lincoln challenged the nation to remember that God was with us during times of peace and blessings but also with us during times of struggle and war.

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with our family and friends may we never forget the “gracious hand which preserved us ...”  and may we never be “too proud to pray to the God that made us!”  From all the Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province, may this Thanksgiving Day be a blessing to all of you and may we take time in the midst of our celebrating to give thanks to God from whom all blessings flow. Happy Thanksgiving (and a Blessed Advent in advance!)

In the Spirit of the Redeemer, 

Paul J. Borowski, C.Ss.R.