Gratitude is fundamentally connected to being present. Consider the soles of your feet on the ground. You have gone all day with the feeling, perhaps lightness, or perhaps achiness, of the soles of your feet on the ground. However, we pass through entire days without this awareness and pass up the opportunity for gratitude for the Earth beneath our feet and God’s creation. Likewise, if you are seated, feel the back of your thigh pressing on the chair. This allows us to give gratitude to the workers and transporters who made that seat possible for rest. Or consider your chest, as it rises and falls with each breath which comes from God and how often we take that for granted. The more present we are to our surroundings and to the present moment, the better we can express gratitude. 

There is no better example of this than the Eucharist where we celebrate the True Presence of God in ordinary bread. Eucharist comes from the Greek word for ‘Thanksgiving’ so it is in gratitude that we recognize and eat the True Presence of the Divine. Another name we give the Eucharist is Holy Communion because as Catholics we enter into worship together as one community. When we are fully present we can see Jesus in our neighbor, in our sister, as Jesus commanded in Matthew 25, “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me”. The Eucharistic celebration must evoke eternal gratitude for God, who is present in the bread and wine, in ourselves, who eats the bread and wine, and also for our neighbor who eats as well. 

I pray that you may go through your daily life, through work, school, shopping, gardening, and even breathing with the same powerful awareness and gratitude for the present moment as you do at Mass during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.