Homily - Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2010

Abbot Caedmon Holmes, O.S.B

The central three days of the Church's year, the Holy Triduum, begins with this Mass and goes on through Good Friday and Holy Saturday to the evening prayer of Easter Sunday. Today's celebration on the evening of Holy Thursday is so rich in connections and meanings, all centered, of course, on the person of Christ, on his self-sacrifice for us. The connections radiate out from that moment of the Last Supper into the past and the future, just as the rays of the wire sculpture over the altar radiate out from the head and hands of the crucified Jesus. Indeed his person---his body and blood---is the source of the unlimited richness and wealth of the Church.

Looking into the past from the perspective of that Thursday evening of the Last Supper in the first century we contemplate the Passover of Egypt, the miraculous act by which the LORD delivered from oppression and slavery in Egypt the people of Israel, who were helpless to free themselves.

An essential feature of the Passover is the slaughtered Lamb, whose sprinkled blood saved them from death on that fateful night, as we heard in the first reading from the Book of Exodus. The liturgical commemoration of that miraculous deliverance is the Passover feast, which the Jews continue annually to observe right up to this present week in the spring of 2010. In Christ, the true Lamb of God, there is revealed an even deeper meaning of that ancient event for the entire human race, an even more profound liberation from our worst slavery---the slavery to sin and death.

In the moment which was present to Jesus, this was his Last Supper, his farewell to his friends.  In a couple of hours there would follow his arrest and Passion ( his judicial conviction, suffering and death), the Passion, whose meaning Jesus was explaining and whose effects he was perpetuating for all time by instituting the Holy Eucharist. He took the bread, and giving thanks broke it, and said (as St Paul reminds us in the second reading), "This is my Body, which is for you."  After the meal he took the cup and said, "This cup is the New Covenant in my Blood: when you drink it, do so in memory of me."  Here we have the entire wealth of the Church: "namely, Christ himself, our Passover sacrifice, and the living bread who through his flesh, made by the Holy Spirit alive and life-giving, offers life to people, who are thus invited and persuaded to offer--- especially at the Offertory of the Mass in just a few minutes from now--- to offer, along with Him, their very selves, their difficulties, and all created things." (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 5)

Looking into the future from the Last Supper, there is the

Church thus established, and supplied with the essential nourishment for her on-going pilgrimage in this world and the promise of her eternal reward in the life to come. The Church lives on the Eucharist. The Church lives from the Eucharist.  Today is considered the birthday of the Holy Eucharist, the birthday of the Mass.

And there is the Priesthood.  "Do this in memory of me," Jesus said to his apostles, thus ordaining them to be priests.  The Eucharist could not continue in the Church without the priesthood. Hence today is also thought of as the birthday of what we call the Ministerial Priesthood, of bishop and priests, who act in Christ's person at the altar and in the other sacraments.

While we are thinking of what was future to Jesus at the Last Supper we mustn't omit the Mandatum, the foot-washing, which embodies self-giving service. Jesus said to them, "As I have done to you, so must you do to one another." 

We know from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (as well as from St Paul) that it was at this Last Supper that Jesus instituted the Eucharist and entrusted it to the apostles, the first priests, to continue.

But in John's account of the Last Supper, which we have just now heard, there is no explicit mention of the Eucharist. In its place we find---what is not recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke or in Paul---the episode of the washing of the feet by Jesus. (Elsewhere in John's Gospel Jesus has very much to say about eating his body and drinking his blood in the Eucharist.)  The foot-washing can be understood as John's way (and Jesus' way) of highlighting the deep meaning of the Eucharist, which is that Jesus takes in his Passion the lowest place for our benefit, to cleanse us of our filth. He washes us. In a similar way, He doesn't merely serve food to us: he actually becomes food and drink for us.

What Christ has done for us, he has done.  It stands there forever, no matter how much or how little we choose to respond to it.  But he says, "Just as I have done, so also must you do." The stupendous abasement and service which Jesus undertook for us presses us to imitate it. (Maybe that was part of the reason that Simon Peter was initially unwilling to let Jesus wash his feet: he felt the pressure there would be on him in the future to act the same way himself.)  Our belonging to Christ presses us to act like him. He frees us from slavery, in order that we may act, no longer as slaves, but as the free, with the behavior and the speech of God's intimate friends. What a pity and disgrace it would be if we responded to this boundless generosity of his with self-centeredness and stinginess!

We would have no excuse, because in the Church Christ continues to exercise his miraculous power to instruct, heal, and consecrate us to live like him. Let's ask him to do just that.  Let's ask him to help us participate in the special liturgies of these three days with such attention and sincerity that our relationship with him may be deepened and we may become truly his disciples.

We are now going to carry out the rite of washing the feet. The Latin name of the rite is mandatum, because Jesus said during the Last Supper, "I give you a new commandment (mandatum): that you love one another as I have loved you." (13:34). Mandatum came into English (through Old French) as "Maundy"; hence Holy Thursday is often called Maundy Thursday. In just a moment I, as the Abbot of this monastic community, am going to carry out Christ's command by washing the feet of the monks of Portsmouth Abbey who are present, and also of Mr. Perreira, who is an employee of the monastery, and of Dr. DeVecchi, who represents the School and all of you.

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