Thanksgiving feasts are just days away.  Many a household will be focused on family and food (and such delicious food it is!) while giving thanks for the blessings that they have received. My focus this year will be on what we do before making pigs of ourselves at the dinner table: saying the grace before the meal.  Growing up, we always used the ritual Catholic grace "Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive through Christ our Lord. Amen" with my dad offering his finale "whoever eats the fastest gets the most-est."  It will be our first food based holiday without hearing that extra verse.

But there is another kind of grace.  Not one that we recite, but one that we are freely given. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grace like this: “Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and eternal life. Grace is a participation in the life of God.” (CCC #1996-1997)  

We receive sanctifying grace at baptism.  Actual grace is God nudging us, giving supernatural pushes of encouragement to respond to him, to turn to him and to do good.  

I hope that along with counting your blessings and being thankful, that you also take a moment to receive God's grace so that all through our day we can say yes to the Creator of the universe who freely invites us to share in his life.