“My word shall not return to me empty but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it”
There is nothing more profoundly spiritual than the activity of giving thanks. It is not just a matter of good manners. It is the recognition of something other than ourselves. It recognizes that we are not complete in and of ourselves. Others have labored and we have entered into their labour and even into the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour. Yet human labour depends upon the order and the intelligible character of a natural world which we did not make, a natural world, too, it must be said, which cannot account for itself; hence creation which implies a relation to a Creator.
Thankfulness, in the spiritual sense of this rich and vital word, is a check upon the arrogance and the presumption of all of us, atheists and believers alike. That we can make a mess of the great truths of religion, not to mention the natural world and our lives, is part of the religious story, albeit in the different forms belonging to the integrity of each of the world’s great religions. Atheism is a form of denial of the truth about the phenomenal and intelligible world in which we find ourselves. Sin, for believers, is similarly a denial; a denial of the truth with which we identify rather than reject. We confront this truth continually and constantly in the liturgy where we are called to confess, knowing precisely our shortcomings and failings, our follies and foolishnesses, individually and collectively.
We meet in the autumnal beauty of October in the time of the gathering of the harvest of nature’s year. In our cultural moment of anger, fear, and uncertainty, we nonetheless find ourselves surrounded with the bounty of creation and the fruits of human labour. We meet in the Church. Here things of the spirit and things of nature intersect, reminding us of the spiritual nature of all reality. It acknowledges the great truth that we are part of the created order and, even more, that creation finds its voice of praise through us, in part through our work itself, honouring the order and truth of creation without which there can be no harvest, but, even more, through the liturgy itself.
What we behold in the beauty of the Church at Harvest Thanksgiving is a profound theological truth about the redemption of creation. Everything is returned to God, not because God needs zucchini and pumpkins, but because everything exists for and through God. Along with the parade of pumpkins, there is the parade of prepositions, for, through, of, in, to, and with, that belong to Thanksgiving as the free act of spiritual creatures. We are creatures who know and love and who know that we know and love. That catapults us into the awareness of God as the principle and cause of the created order of which we are a part and in whom we find our wholeness, our completeness. Ultimately, Thanksgiving is to, for and with God and one another and the whole of creation itself. It is profoundly relational; a counter to the false assumptions of the autonomous self, fragile and isolated, closed in upon itself, empty and desolate; a counter to the culture of death which has forgotten that life is a gift, the gift of God himself.
This point the poet George Herbert makes beautifully in his poem, “Ungratefulnesse.” “Thou hast but two rare cabinets full of treasure: the Trinity and the Incarnation:” God in his truth and God with us. “Thou hast unlock’d them both/ and made them jewels to betroth/ The work of thy creation/Unto thyself in everlasting pleasure.” Such images gather us toGod in thankfulness and love for his goodness and love and to our being with him.
Thanksgiving cannot be forced, either our thanks to one another or our more reflective thanks to God for everything, including being able to thank one another. The pumpkin does not give thanks to God for being a pumpkin except through its being. But humans can knowingly and freely give thanks to God both for the pumpkin and for ourselves as living beings, and, even more, that God is God and that God is with us and with one another. It is, literally, the freest thing that we can do. In being thankful with all our hearts we are being true to our minds.
Creation and the events of human lives are not just a series of accidents. We can only act with purpose because the world is the product of the mind of God. We can read that mind in the created order itself, let alone read what has been revealed in the witness of the Scriptures, themselves, in a way, an extended commentary on creation, an extended commentary that is about the return of all things to God from whom all things have come; in short, the redemption of creation. This is the wonder and power of Isaiah’s moving words about the Word of God which goes forth with purpose in creation and redemption. The same theme is picked up in John’s Gospel as centered in the Eucharist.
Thanksgiving, in the Christian sense, has a further and deeper spiritual dimension. It enters into the very life of God. Our thanksgiving centers on the Eucharist; the Greek word means thanksgiving. It is the thanksgiving of the Son to the Father in the bond of the Spirit of their mutual love, a thanksgiving out of the barren wilderness of human sin and folly. There can be no greater thanksgiving, no greater vision of redemption, no greater awakening of true thanksgiving in us than the realization that the Word of God which has gone forth in creation does not go forth in vain. It goes forth with purpose, even in the face of our denials of the divine purpose for our humanity. God makes something out of our denials. It is the thanksgiving of the Son to the Father in the Holy Spirit made visible on the Cross. In him we find more than the physical bread of our daily sustenance. We find the spiritual food of our salvation, “the bread of life,” the life that embraces things seen and things unseen. Jesus is “the bread of life,” because he is the Word and Son of the Father who has come forth into the world, not just as the creative word, but as the Word made flesh to accomplish our redemption and the redemption of the world.
Thanksgiving is our participation in these spiritual motions of grace. It is the freest thing that we can do and it belongs to the dignity of our humanity. We give thanks to the God who has “betrothed the work of [his] creation unto [himself] in everlasting pleasure.” It signals wonderfully that sense of God’s will and purpose for our humanity, a will and purpose which includes the world itself. Ungratefulness is only our atheism. Harvest Thanksgiving is about thanking God for the good things that we see and enjoy of the bounties of the land but also for the spiritual freedoms belonging to our lives as spiritual creatures, creatures who give thanks to God, finding our completeness in being with him whose word does not go forth or return empty.
Fr. David Curry
Harvest Thanksgiving 2026