“Well, we can celebrate Thanksgiving any place,” said Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, when asked how it feels to mark the American holiday in Italy.
“It’s a national day when we remember all the blessing we’ve received as a people – the origins, the pilgrims, the Indians – and go back to that love-fest at our beginnings as I think it formed the idea of our nation, that we should be a people at peace with everyone.”
Today’s festivities began with the celebration of Mass in the college chapel where the main celebrant was Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. The homily meanwhile was delivered by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, a former student and rector of the North American College.
“A blessed Thanksgiving to all of you,” he wished to all present before reminding them of St. Augustine of Hippo’s contention that “gratitude is the first step to holiness,” as from gratitude, said St. Augustine, comes humility.
Thus we recognize that without Christ, “nothing is possible but with Him nothing is impossible,” said Archbishop Dolan, adding that “His grace and mercy are lavished upon us through absolutely no merits of our own,” so that we should “gratefully and humbly accept his gifts,” in the knowledge that “even the ability to do that is itself His gift.”
Speaking to CNA, Archbishop Dolan recalled his student years at the college between 1972 and 1976 and how he had never celebrated Thanksgiving “with more fervor and more gusto than I did when I was here in Rome.”