Holy Thursday – Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper
The final days of Lent are passing and we are beginning the Holy Triduum. This is the most important part of the Liturgical year, and so we can expect the readings to speak to our most basic and fundamental spiritual needs. We need to love and be loved. We need purpose.
In Exodus, we read Moses’ direction for how to celebrate the first Passover, and every year the same ritual meal re-created to memorialize Israel’s liberation from slavery. It’s a ritual that takes place not in a communal assembly, but in the homes of all Israel. First, they get a lamb. But they don’t go to the meat market and get lamb-meat wrapped in a bag, already slaughtered and butchered. Instead, each family is supposed to get a living lamb 4 days before the meal, and “keep it.” In other words, it’s a pet; a cute pet lamb. Imagine how children would experience this… the lamb would get a name, they would play with it. Then on the forth day, the lamb is slaughtered. This would have a powerful effect on everyone in the house, but especially children learning their parents’ faith. In death, the family is liberated from slavery. The lamb had one purpose: to serve as the sacrificial meal. It was kept, and perhaps even loved by the kids. Liberation costs us something.
In the second reading and gospel, we see the Eucharist completing the first lesson of the Passover. As often as you “eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord...” Again, it is through this death that we are liberated. But in the gospel something even more spectacular than liberation happens. First, Jesus “loved his own,” and “ loved them to the end.” This is about God’s love for us. Second, we see Jesus tie that love concretely to an act of humble service. The “Master and Teacher” washes the disciples’ dirty, stinky, sandal-wearing, dusty, sweaty feet. And he does it willingly! In the middle of it, he even makes a joke about Peter not bathing enough! Service for Jesus is a natural way to show love. Third, Jesus says ‘if I, the Master, do this for you, you also need to do it for one-another.’
In other words, even if we have the misfortune of thinking we are better than others, we still need to humbly serve them as an act of Love. This is part of the Passover, and the Eucharistic meal. It’s at the core of our faith. At the first Passover, the blood of the lamb was a sign that God was liberating Israel. But Jesus seems to tie his Eucharistic death together with our action. We participate in our salvation by lovingly, humbly serving others. He has given us a ‘model,’ and he expects us to follow it. We ritually wash feet today, but we are called conform our whole life to this model. We ritually eat the bread and drink the cup, but you and I are called to die to ourselves, and rise as members of Christ’s body, whose purpose is to love and serve the world.
This Triduum, let us embrace the Love and Purpose Christ fulfills in each of us. Amen.
-Chris Nieport