I have known since early high school that the two things I am most thankful for are my family and my faith. The strange thing for me, though, is that I may not have had either if my parents had not gotten divorced at the end of my fourth-grade year. My mother was from a Seattle, Catholic family and my father from an Erie, Presbyterian family. Living in Dallas, we would attend the Presbyterian church sporadically, and we would only really see extended family after long plane trips on major holidays. After the divorce, however, when my mother, sister, and I moved to Seattle, I was brought into the Catholic Church and had regular contact with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
This is a paradox I have been pondering since adolescence: How can the greatest trauma of my childhood have also been the source of my greatest blessings? Paradoxes are not easily answered, but our faith tells us that one of the unique characteristics of God is that he can always bring a greater good from any evil. (Look at the salvation he wrought through the Cross!) He is the only one who is able to do this, and he will always do it if we let him.
As we celebrate Thanksgiving amid the greatest societal trauma of our lifetimes, I hope we are open to the good the Lord wishes to bring from it. I hope we can give thanks for everything in our lives, even and especially those things which emerged from difficult times or difficult people. In the end, the Lord will bring about a greater good.
Fr. Moore 