Met. Tikhon: Thanksgiving Represents 'Best Impulses of Our National Culture'

Met. Tikhon. Photo: oca.org

NOV. 25, 2025 — Met. Tikhon, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), released a message on Tuesday calling the faithful to embrace gratitude, community, and the deeper spiritual meaning of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

Despite growing “secularization, polarization, ubiquitous commercialization and corporatization,” the hierarch noted that Americans still pause each year for a day rooted in tradition and shared life. 

"The prominence of this holiday in American life speaks not just to the best impulses of our national culture, but to the basic yearnings of every human heart," he said. "We long for meaning, for belonging, for a life that is simple and good. "

His Beatitude reminded the faithful that these longings find their true fulfillment in the Church, “where we find our destiny as vessels of the overflowing life and love of the Godhead.”

He encouraged the faithful to give thanks not only for “earthly bounty” and the blessings of family and community, but also for God’s invitation “to enter into the joy of unending thanksgiving in heaven.”

Met. Tikhon also urged renewed missionary consciousness, quoting Christ’s words from the Gospel of Matthew: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” He called on Orthodox Christians to remember those “hungry hearts… who do not yet know Christ” and to pray for more laborers in the Lord’s harvest.

The full message from His Beatitude can be read here.

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