Watch and Learn from the Master

Tonight we will begin the Triduum with our Holy Thursday liturgy. We will be with Jesus as he washes his disciples feet and then wait with him in the garden. Tomorrow we will be with him to his death.

Week 3 of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius invites us to be with Jesus in his passion and to enter into his perspective. St. Ignatius wants us to focus on Jesus’ experience – being with his feelings all the way through the passion, including on the cross, all the way to his death.

But it is not just about Jesus’ feelings, but also about his response. My friend Maria Scaperlanda quoted in her blog post last night her friend Father Thomas Boyer, who said:

The Passion of Christ is not about how Christ suffered, what happened to him, and how awful we might think it was. The Passion of Christ is about his response, not his persecution…

Watch and learn from the master. Despite his fear and his agony, he is focused on God and on others. He meets women who are weeping for him, and he tells them to weep for themselves. He hangs there with a criminal, and he comforts him with a promise of Paradise. No matter what happens in this Passion, it is never about him. He remains attentive and focused on God and the needs of others… This is what we can learn from the Passion; not how Christ died, but what he still teaches us through his death about hope, about sacrifice, and about love for others.

Blessings on this Holy Thursday.

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In The Garden With Jesus

Today is Holy Thursday. This evening, we will celebrate the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, participating in Jesus’ washing of the feet of his disciples and his sharing his last meal with his friends. But what follows after that meal is also an important part of the story.

Following his last meal with his friends, Jesus went to the garden to pray to his Father about what he knew he was about to undergo.

We cannot really understand this episode (the first of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary) unless we completely embrace one of the fundamental tenets of our faith – that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. Although this is something we profess every time we recite the Creed, I think we sometimes have a tendency to overemphasize the divine at the expense of the human.

But unless we understand that Jesus was as human as you or I, we cannot appreciate what real suffering Jesus underwent in the garden. Matthew says, Jesus began to feel sorrow and distress; Jesus says his “soul is sorrowful even to death.” This is not pretend suffering, this is not God manifesting suffering to make a point. This is the fully human Jesus truly experiencing an almost unbearable level of suffering.

And this fully human Jesus faces fear and dread of the suffering he knows he is about to undergo. Jesus has just finished his last meal with his closest friends. He has known since turning his head toward Jerusalem that this is it, so to speak. He may not know the details, but he has a clear enough idea what is going to happen; he knows he is about to be arrested and executed.

Not surprisingly, Jesus says to His father – is this really necessary? Must I suffer so much? Is it possible for this cup to pass? Jesus doesn’t want to undergo the suffering.

But this is someone who has lived his life saying Yes to God. Who has prayed and walked with God day after day. And Jesus’ lifetime of “yes’s” to God, leads to his big yes here – Your will, not mine, be done.

The question for us, is can we do the same? As you sit in the garden this evening with Jesus and his disciples, ask yourself: What cup do I ask God to let pass from me? And then ask yourself: Am I willing to instead ask God for the strength to bear the cup?

Do This in Memory of Me

Today is Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, as some Christian denominations refer to it. By whatever name we call it, it is the day on which we commemorate the Last Supper – the Passover meal that Jesus shared with his friends on the night before he was crucified.

Many Catholics will attend tonight the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper. During that Mass, two related things will happen. First, we will hear St. Paul’s account of the institution of the Eucharist. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he will pass on to the people of Corinth what he “received from that Lord,” that

the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Lest we think “Do this in remembrance of me,” is satisfied simply by listening to the priest recite these words each week during the Eucharistic Prayer, followed by our receipt of the Eucharist, during the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper we also listen and then participate in a reenactment of the scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.

John’s Gospel contains no account of the institution of the Eucharist, as do the synoptic Gospels and Paul. Instead, Jesus washes his disciples’s feet, a menial act that would normally be performed by a slave. And, just as he says in the reading we hear from Paul, “Do this in memory of me,” he says here, “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” Jesus says, I am your servant; in my memory, be a servant to each other.

The command in John’s Gospel is a challenging one. It instructs us that “do this in memory of me” is not satisfied soley by our Eucharistic celebration at Mass, as important as that is. Rather, we are asked to follow Jesus’ model in how we live and interact with all of our brothers and sisters.

Jesus Washes the Feet of His Disciples

One of the perennial elements of our Holy Thursday liturgy is the reenactment of the scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. To show his love, Jesus performs the most menial task his disciples could imagine, something normally done by a servant – he washes their feet.

It is interesting that John’s Gospel does not contain the account we read in the synoptic Gospels of the institution of the Eucharist. We don’t read of Jesus taking bread and wine, saying the blessing, and handing them to his disciples, saying “This is my body…This is my blood.”

Instead, Jesus washes his disciples’s feet. Despite Peter’s protestations of unworthiness, Jesus insists on performing this act of love. And, just as he says in the synoptic Gospels, “Do this in memory of me,” he says here, “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” Jesus says, I am your servant; in my memory, be a servant to each other. When we take that command seriously, we understand Jesus’ insistence that Peter allow him to wash his feet; if Peter can’t be washed by Jesus, he will never be able to wash the feet of those he perceives to be “beneath” him.

The command in John’s Gospel is a challenging one. It instructs us that “do this in memory of me” is not satisfied soley by our Eucharistic celebration at Mass, as important as that is. Rather, we are asked to follow Jesus’ model in how we live and interact with all of our brothers and sisters.

Holy Thursday and the The Lord’s Supper

Today is Holy Thursday and in the evening hours wherever they may be, Catholics all around the world will celebrate the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper. The final meal Jesus enjoyed with his disciples before his death. The meal during which he instituted the Eucharist.

During the Eucharistic Prayer in each Mass, we hear a variation on the words we will hear this evening from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, that “the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.'”

This is my body. This is my blood. Thomas Merton records an experience he had once at a Mass in Havana during the moment of Consecration. The priest raised the Host and then the chalice, immediately after which a group of young schoolchildren shout out the words of the Creed, “Creo en Dios.” At that moment, he writes,

as sudden as the shout and as definite, and a thousand times more bright, there formed in my mind an awareness, an understanding, a realization of what had just taken place on the altar, at the Consecration: a realization of God made present in the words of Consecration in a way that made Him belong to me….It was as if I had been suddenly illuminated by being blinded by the manifestation of God’s presence….[This awareness] ignored all sense experience in order to strike directly at the heart of truth, as if a sudden and immediate contact had been established between my intellect and the Truth Who was now physically really and substantially before me on the altar….And the first articulate thought that came to my mind was: “Heaven is right here in front of me.”

This is my body.  This is my blood.  We hear the words so often, it is easy to miss their enormity. The physically real and substantial actual presence of Christ each time we fulfill the command Jesus gave his disciples at the Last Supper to “Do this in remembrance of me.”