The First Thanksgiving
in America
was This:
The Most Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass
Really!
Not This:
The word
“Eucharist”
literally means
“Thanksgiving”
— it is the ecclesiastical Greek eukharistia or
‘thanksgiving’, from the Greek eukharistos for
“grateful”.
What most Americans
do not know — even Catholics, given our impoverished
catechesis since Vatican II — is that what we today celebrate
as Thanksgiving in America was in fact the
first Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the newly discovered America
in Saint Augustine, Florida on September 8, 1565. Noted Historian
and Scholar, Dr. Michael Gannon (d. 2017), describes it as follows:
“When the
first Spanish settlers landed in what is now St. Augustine
on September 8, 1565, to build a settlement, their
first act was to hold a religious service to thank God
for the safe arrival of the Spanish fleet … After the
Mass, Father Francisco Lopez, the Chaplain of the Spanish
ships and the first pastor of St. Augustine, stipulated
that the natives from the Timucua tribe be fed along
with the Spanish settlers, including Don Pedro Menendez
de Aviles, the leader of the expedition. It was the
very first Thanksgiving and the first Thanksgiving meal
in the United States.”
https://aleteia.org/2016/11/22/the-first-thanksgiving-in-america-was-a-catholic-mass/
This
was 55 years before the Protestant
Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and gave their
Thanksgiving to God together with the Wampanoag Indians.
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Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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