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There is a very profound story that comes from the time that Mother Teresa of Calcutta came to Denver to visit the youth of our city, of our area of the country. There was a woman who was a little advanced in years who had paid a great deal of the expenses for Mother Teresa to come, had been very generous to make her trip possible financially and so to reward her she was able to ride in the car up to Estes Park with Mother Teresa and they had a long talk as they went. And in the course of their talk on their way to Estes Park the woman told Mother Teresa about her life and she described how much God had blessed her and how thankful she was for her life, and she went on to tell Mother Teresa of how the Lord had always provided plenty of money for their family, how He had kept her from any real pain or any real illness in her life. She described how God had kept all of her children very prosperous and no difficulties in their lives and she said "You know I’ve never had any sorrow in my life, and all has gone very, very well", and Mother Teresa at that point -and this is a true story- became very concerned and she grabbed her by the hands, and she said: "My daughter pray, pray very hard that God will begin to bless you", in other words, she had not known any suffering, any sorrow, any difficulties in her life, and Mother Teresa from her wisdom knew that that’s where the Lord’s blessings truly are, and that is where we truly give thanks to God.
You and I when we come before the holy altar today, on this thanksgiving day, we bring to God everything in our lives, and we are thankful to God, and when I say "everything" I mean the things that we expect, the things that we obviously give thanks for, the things that bring joy to our heart, that bring gladness to our family. All of the things that we obviously give thanks for. But we bring to God’s altar, at this Mass and every Mass, everything in our lives without exception; and so we bring to the Lord the sorrows of this last year and we say: "Dear God, thank You for those blessings." We bring to the Lord the defeats of this past year, the discouragement, and we say: "Dear Lord, thank You for those blessings." We bring to the Lord the pain and the illnesses that we have, and we say: "Dear Lord, thank You for allowing me to imitate Your Son Jesus on the cross by my sufferings and my pain." We bring to the Lord the defeats, the struggles, the sorrows, the fears; we bring to the Lord the pains and the sufferings in addition to the obvious things. Because it is in those difficult things that God is specially working His will in us.
You and I we pray that the Lord will allow us to imitate Christ Jesus crucified, and we imitate Christ Jesus crucified in the difficult things of our lives offered in thanksgiving to God. You and I, we learn from the heart to pray: "Dear Father in heaven, this difficulty, this sorrow, this illness, this suffering, all of this I offer to You Father, through the Sacred Heart of Jesus crucified for the healing and salvation of souls, specially in our own families. We give thanks to God for the joys and the sorrows, all that He has brought to us this past year.
Mother Teresa reminded that woman that it is in the cross of our Lord Jesus that we grow most powerfully and most deeply in our Catholic life.
There is a wonderful little praise here from one of the saints, and he writes and he says: "Woe to the house where no master dwells, woe to the field where no farmer works, woe to that soul that does not have Christ to cultivate it, to produce the good fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Left to itself it is choked with thorns and thistles. Woe to that soul that does not have Christ dwelling in it."
You and I, we give thanks to God that He has dwelt in our souls in this past year, and all of the joys and gladness of this past year; but let us not forget that in His Sacred Heart, He has dwelt most deeply in our souls when we have been closest to Christ Jesus crucified, and it is for those moments specially that we give thanks.

At the end of the Mass, as soon as we have concluded the Mass, we are going to bring out baskets of bread, and we’ll give them a blessing so that you can take home a small loaf of this blessed bread and place it upon your family’s table this evening, and just begin your thanksgiving dinner by praying that thanksgiving blessing if you wish to use that one provided, and then you might take that little loaf of bread and each person in the family takes a little piece off of that loaf, and as they hold it they give thanks to God for one thing in their life, maybe specially where they have been closest to Christ crucified in the last year, and then eat that piece of bread and pass the loaf to the next person, and each person goes around, and as a family give thanks to God for the blessings received this past year through the crucified heart of Jesus our Lord.