Homily for Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper
1 April 2010
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
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Just when we think our Lord cannot humble Himself any more, out of love for His disciples, He humbles Himself even further.
The institution of the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist that we mark with special solemnity tonight is an extreme extension of the mystery of the Incaration. An extreme extension. Consider this.
At the annunciation, we celebrate the improbable leap that God, who is beyond all time and space and materiality, is conceived among us in time and space, so that we might see His face and not die, but truly live. This human nature is received by God from a woman, and not some ordinary woman, but a sinless virgin, a virgin kept sinless from the moment of Her conception by the grace of the Son she conceived. An improbable story, to be sure, an amazing condescension by God to be present to His people, but a sure bet in one sense, being conceived in the womb of a woman so incomparably perfect. Tonight, as you will see quite readily, Jesus is conceived again and brought forth through the intercession of Mary, mother of the Church, to be sure, but more proximately by three men who are unlike Mary in both gender and sinlessness. Jesus is brought forward physically in time and space again not through the yes of a sinless virgin, but by holy words repeated by sinful men. Talk about trading a sure thing, the incarnation, for a risky venture, the institution of the Holy Eucharist. In this sacrament Jesus gives the Church tonight, Jesus extends His humble birth and trusts ordinary and fallible men to make Him indefectibly present. Whenever we think God cannot humble Himself any more for our salvation, He humbles Himself even more.
When Jesus gave his innocent body into the hands of sinful men to be scourged and crucified, He knew what He was doing, even as He prayed for those who knew not what they did. In the Eucharist instituted by our Lord on this holy night, He arranged that until the end of time His innocent body would be given to sinful men for their salvation by sinful men, His chosen priests, who do not know what they are doing. For as the Cure of Ars, the universal patron of priests has said, if a priest knew what he was doing he would die. Well, I do not expect tonight's Mass to be the Mass when one of the three of us priests will fully realize for the first time what we are doing, but if it happens, don't worry about us - what a way to go! On Good Friday, Jesus knew what He was doing, giving His body over to be crucified. Yet He trusts His Church on Holy Thursday to offer His body again and again, even though we can never fully understand what we are doing.
What is more, Jesus offered Himself along the via crucis in that sinless human nature He received from Mary. This nature, like Mary's, was fully alive, the glory of God revealed in a man fully alive! It is through this nature, the highest nature created by God, the only nature made in His image and likeness, and a nature filled with grace, through which Jesus revealed His divine nature. And yet still, many who looked at Him were unable to answer the question, who do you say that I am? Yet instead of increasing the supernatural signs and wonders that would reduce our need to trust in God's love for us by faith, Jesus institutes the Eucharist, and joins His person to something much more ordinary than a perfect human nature received from a sinless virgin, He joins His person to bread and wine. Instead of forcing us to believe in Him, Jesus instead humbles Himself to purify and deepen our faith, making Himself perfectly and really present, if yet under a veil - body, blood, soul and divinity - through the ordinary and universal elements of bread and wine. Whenever we think God cannot humble Himself any more out of love for us and for our salvation, He does. When He has every reason to stop appearing to his disciples who do not recognize who He is, He arranges to be present all the more through the Eucharist. As hard as it was for many to recognize Him, and as hard as it remains for us disciples to recognize Christ in each other, Christ humbles Himself even more and makes Himself present through a species even easier to ignore than the human person, through the Eucharistic species of bread and wine. We see this in the millions of lapesed Catholics, and the lack of unity that we have as Christians, how easy Christ has made Himself to ignore by choosing to make Himself present through bread and wine. Yet He does because He is more humble than we can imagine. He knows the gift of faith that has been given to us, and He believes in us to respond to His Resurrection in an even greater way than Thomas did, who placed His hands in our Lord's side! Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed!
When Jesus ascended Calvary, so frightening was the spectacle, that most of His disciples, and almost all of the apostles, fled. They denied knowing Him. They locked doors in fear. Yet Jesus in His love for his disciples, does not abandon them, but goes through locked doors, appears to them after His resurrection, sends them the gift of the Holy Spirit, and most of all, as we celebrate tonight, asks those disciples to remember Him through the breaking of the bread. Rather than going away from His disciples even though yesterday, today and tomorrow His disciples did, and do, and will go away from Him, Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist goes ahead of his disciples. Through His gift of the Eucharist, those who flee Calvary can find that Christ has gone before them to Lawrence, and New York, and London, and Moscow, and Tokyo and Johannesburg. Those of us who refuse to go where Jesus is, and who ask to be let off of His cross, find that in the sacrament of the Eucharist Jesus has gone to where we are. As the psalmist says - Where can I go from your love? If I climb the heavens you are there, if I go down to Hell, you are there, if I take the wings of the dawn, and fly to the sea's farthest end, you are there! What is more, He makes Himself small enough in the Eucharist, that those of us who will not leave our place in order to go to Bethlehem or Calvary, have the dignity of having Jesus come most intimately under our roof, though we are not worthy to receive Him.
My friends, tonight is not in the end about whether we can muster enough faith to believe that Christ is truly present - body, blood, soul and divinity - in the Eucharist He instituted on this most holy night. That is important, yes, to find our faith, but not as important as seeing with wonder and awe how God, just when you think He cannot humble Himself anymore, out of love for his disciples and for our salvation, does just that! As the Lord washes our feet tonight, may we see Him anew in the Holy Eucharist as the one who has truly come among us, in ways we can hardly believe, not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many! +m
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