Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper
One of the things I find very difficult to do is to read a book more than once. Especially if it’s a fictional book like the Grisham novel I’m in now, it’s hard for me to go over the same story a second or third time because, after I have read the book, I know where it’s going. I know what the rising action will be, I know what the climax of the story will be, and I know how it ends.
The difficulty with Holy Week, in particular our celebration with the Triduum, is that we hear the same readings each year. I’m not suggesting we change that practice, because these readings are so powerful and so fitting, that we need to hear them each year. But I think that each of us is faced with the temptation of becoming emotionally and/or spiritually numb to what is happening in these days, because, for most of us, from our earliest memories, we have heard these same readings. Using tonight’s readings as examples, we are used to hearing about the institution of the Passover in Exodus, the institution of the Eucharist in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and Christ’s humble service of His apostles in the Gospel according to St. John.
Allow me to try and shake you from this numbness, and allow the blood to start flowing again, giving us that tingling sensation as we regain our emotional and spiritual feelings.
Tonight we celebrate a three-fold humiliation of Jesus that should shock us to our core. Jesus, the Divine, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient, the Son of God, the one worthy of all worship and adoration, the Master, becomes a slave as He washes the feet of His apostles. Now for most of us, our feet aren’t that bad. Sure, they may smell a bit, but they’re generally clean because we are a society that bathes our feet regularly, that has solid coverings for our feet twice over, if you include socks and shoes. But the apostles did not bathe as regularly as we do, and many of them probably only had sandals covering the bottom of their feet. Even so, the dust, the mud, the bacteria, the infections from open blisters surely would have been the covering for their feet. And Jesus, the Lord of all creation, takes off his outer garments, took a towel, and began to wash the apostles’ feet. This was the work of a slave, not a Master; the work of a servant, not a Lord. And so Jesus says, “‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will understand later.’” Peter has the guts to speak up and say how disgusted He is that Jesus would debase Himself to do this kind of menial service. If Jesus was really God, as the apostles were coming to learn, and as Jesus had claimed throughout His entire public ministry, then this was not the God the Jews were used to worshipping. How could God who was usually accompanied by trumpet blasts, thunder and lightning; whom Ezekiel and Isaiah depicted as a king on a throne with angels ministering to Him constantly in a jeweled paradise quietly wash the feet of His chosen band of men?
And it is even more shocking that, rather than just wash our feet, Jesus wants to come down to the messiest parts of our souls and cleanse them in His blood. He wants to bend down as we recline like honored guests and wash from our souls the dust of all the venial sins we have committed and will commit. He wants to wash off the caked-mud of any of the grave sins we have committed and may commit. He wants to cleanse the putrid, puss-filled wounds of those sins that have been festering on our hearts and souls for many months, or even many years. And we, like Peter, tell Jesus, “Don’t go there! Don’t do that! That part of my life is not worthy of you. It’s not right for you, my Lord, to lower yourself and see. ‘You will never wash my feet.’” But Jesus assures us, “‘Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.’”
Secondly, Jesus humbles Himself by instituting the ministerial priesthood that will act in His name, starting with those Apostles. He chooses, freely and without any force or pressure, to so identify with the men who will be called from his disciples that they are able to act in His name and in His Person. These are not always stellar men. They have argued with each other since they were gathered together about who was the greatest. They come from sinful backgrounds, one of them even being a tax collector, a Roman collaborator. One of His first priests, in fact, the priest who will act as His Vicar, the first Pope, will first deny that he even knows Jesus.
And the shock continues through the centuries and even today as Jesus so debases Himself that he continues to act in a special way through the priests and bishops, allowing them to use His words to change bread and wine into His Body and Blood. Allowing men who have sinned, sometimes grievously, to forgive sins in His name: men who sometimes fight amongst themselves; some who still jostle for power and prestige; some who even deny or betray Him even to this day. Jesus humbles Himself by allowing men who are sinners to be ordained, and entrusting His power to them, drawing them closer to Himself and drawing them to the holiness that is required to execute such a pure office.
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| The Upper Room where Jesus washed the feet of His Apostles, and Instituted the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Holy Orders |
Thirdly, Jesus humbles Himself by allowing bread and wine to become His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. He becomes defenseless once more in the hands of humanity, not able to defend Himself, not opening His mouth, like an unblemished lamb led to the slaughter. He allows the appearances of bread and wine to house His very substance, so that when we hold what looks like bread and drink what tastes like wine, we are holding and drinking none other than the Lord of Life, the Creator of all things, the true Passover Lamb. He makes Himself so vulnerable, that, if someone wanted, they could do horrible, sacrilegious things to His Body and Blood, and He remains defenseless, protected only by our reverence and respect for Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. And still we break our 1-hour before Communion Eucharistic fasts with gum, coffee, or even regular food and drink; still we receive Jesus in a state of grave sin, knowing that we should first be cleansed by God’s loving forgiveness if we are conscious a grave sin which greatly ruptures our relationship with God; still we consider the great gift that it is to be able to receive the Eucharist as boring and commonplace, rather than the great joy it truly is to be made one with our Lord as He enters into our very body.
Why? Why would Jesus humble Himself in these extreme ways? Why would He allow Himself to do such menial work; to allow chosen men, still in need of redemption themselves, to act in His person; to allow Himself to become defenseless in our hands and our mouths? Because, “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” Even though we know the ending of this true story, let us be shocked this evening, this beginning of the Sacred Triduum, that God would lower Himself so much, because He loves us; because He wants us that much; because “he loved [us] to the end.”
