Oh, and so it goes… the frenzy of the secular ‘holiday’ season begins. With Thanksgiving day behind us, so many people headed out this morning to face the malls and the giant ‘black Friday’ sales that awaited them in their mad dash for a bargain… Slipping out of their moment of ‘thanksgiving and feasting‘…  they have allowed themselves once again to get caught up in the commercialized meaning of this day. Fighting throngs of shoppers, many were madly dashing about trying to grab the best deals… shoving their shopping carts full with things they most likely don’t even need.

Having abandoned religion, we have lost our sense of gratitude towards God. Without this most vital component to the human soul, many people are trying in vain to satisfy their spiritual emptiness with tangible, material things… But this only leads to a more profound sense of longing…

As a nation that is spiraling in a continual motion away from God, we have become a society that is turning to material goods to satisfy our resulting emptiness. Buying in to all the lies, we are often left looking for the next great thing, that new toy or gadget that will make our lives  better than it is right now.  Failing to see their need for the Lord, they are neglecting the one thing that would change it all… that One Thing that could make us happy.

Even with all the buying… all the hoarding of goods… it is never enough. Losing sight of God and His Grande Design for us, we have become unsatisfied with what we have, dissatisfied with who we are. We are surrounded by all the world, but on the verge of losing our very hearts… our very souls… and most don’t even seem care. We have lost our Faith and have bought into the theology of the world… which is based on lies and greed, ultimately connected to the lies of the devil which seek to destroy our relationship with the Lord.

Without God, man’s hearts have grown cold, we have grown into an ungrateful bunch. Even though many boast of free love and inclusiveness, there is no room for God. Without God there is no Truth, and more importantly, there is no truth to this new ‘love’. We have replaced God’s authentic love with false ideas and feel good slogans that fail to satisfy the human soul. In forgetting our thankfulness to God, we have lost our sense of worth.

We need to remember that regardless of where ever we are in life, with whatever we have… the good as well as the bad, God is still good. He doesn’t change, nor does His Love … It is eternal.  And we need to be thankful for that… whatever it might be. God has created us out of love. He has given us the only freedom we will truly ever have or need. Because of this freedom He cannot dictate that we love Him in return, or even acknowledge that He exists. But we will be held accountable for our choices. All of them… Some of them good, some of them bad….but they will be ours alone… and we need to realize that God is good because He has created us in a way that has allowed us to be who we are…saints, with the inclination to sin.

As the rest of society ‘celebrates’ Black Friday with hectic shopping and sales, let us remember God and thank Him for the many graces He has given us that we cannot not even comprehend. Let us pause for just another moment, during this ‘spirit of thanksgiving’, and give thanks to the Lord for all that we have, for all that we don’t have… We need to remember that everything He does for us is done out of His Fatherly love for us… When we die we will be astounded…. we will be humbled at our lack of love.  We must have a thankful heart towards the Lord, we will never regret for having done all we could for God… He will not be outdone and His generosity towards us will be without measure. So instead of using this Friday as a day to go ‘sales shopping,’ buying so much that we do not need, let us spend another day thanking God for His goodness and have a grateful heart for God… and try (with His grace) to be a bit of God’s love…. a bit of God’s Light in a world that is growing increasingly black… increasingly dark … with sin.