Grateful Tom Tomaszek

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Lyrics

Grateful for the life you give us,
thankful for your holy Son,
joyful in your Spirit flowing,
over all, o God of love.
Grateful for the bread of heaven,
thankful for your holy Word,
joyful in your mercy flowing,
we will praise you.

You are more than we imagine,
ancient holy living Lord.
Even when we doubt your presence
you are faithful to your word.

May our lives proclaim your justice,
may our voices sing your praise,
may our hands work in your service
to the glory of your name.

Artist Reflection

I love the Thanksgiving holiday. I love its simplicity and focus on a family-style meal. I love the fact that we celebrate it in the middle of the week — an ordinary day. I love that we travel near and far to be with family, often taking in strangers so they don't have to be alone on this feast. Of course, food pantries and meal programs have waiting lists, except on Thanksgiving they are lists of people who want to help! It's a strange reversal that happens every year. Even though we have now layered the holiday with football games and the kick-off of the holiday consumer season, we still haven't lost the basic intention the day.

In so many, ways Thanksgiving is the one day each year that we seem to get it right. We pause from our routine lives to acknowledge that our blessings, our abundance, our family (for better or worse) are gifts for which we should be grateful. Wow! What a simple, yet profound day of ritual prayer! We pray intentionally, and we pray just by the actions of coming together to share a meal and give thanks. Oh, how I wish we could always bring that same "attitude of gratitude" to our Sunday worship! Eucharist is the ultimate thanks-giving — through, with, and in Christ. It is too easy to lose sight of that basic intention of Mass when we get immersed in the hard work of preparing music, preaching, and other aspects of our ritual. Yet, at the heart of liturgy is the living Body of Christ giving thanks by their worship of the One, from Whom all blessings flow.

I have come to understand that all prayer is first an expression of thanks-giving to God for the abundance of blessings in my life. That is the essential message of this song, Grateful, and what was "on my heart" as I wrote. Our company had just made the decision to create and launch this website, spiritandsong.com. It was a bold plan and somewhat risky. Could we pull it off? Could we have it ready in time for the National Catholic Youth Conference in 2003? To make that happen, we would have to devote a huge effort of staff time and "spend a few benjamins" in the process. Our hope was that the website could be a place where people of all ages, but especially youth and young adults, could listen to the new, contemporary Catholic music that we were making available at OCP, interact with those artists and songwriters, and share their prayer and faith.

I finished an email sharing the decision with others and had this overwhelming sense of gratitude to the Holy Spirit, whom I knew had been working overtime to make us bold enough to say yes! I walked over to the guitar and piano in my living room and wrote: grateful, thankful, joyful. The rest of the words and melody came easily over the next days. I am grateful for my brother and sister in the faith, Steve Angrisano and Sarah Hart, for lending their voices and musical spirit to bring the song alive in this recording. Don't they do a fabulous job?

One last thing. In these continuing days of death and violence in Iraq and many other places around the world, including families, I am aware that blessings come in many forms. Is it possible to experience the presence of God, the blessing of God, through the difficulties of life as well? When our hearts are aching for healing, for meaning, for assurance, for safe shelter, can we also — as Job did — give God thanks and praise? I know that is extremely difficult. My heart and prayer this Thanksgiving goes out to all of you who are coping with extreme loss, especially the parents of young Veronica Gantt, the 16-year-old who was tragically killed in a car accident at NCYC in Columbus. I pray that you will know the height, depth, length and breadth of God's love. Veronica (meaning "true image") who wiped Jesus' face on the way to Calvary, help us to see the face of God in all the moments of our lives, and to know that we are blessed by God's love.

- Tom Tomaszek