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+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which 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’” (I Corinthians 12:23-25).
Maundy Thursday receives its name from the mandantum novum – the new commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you” which Jesus physically and intimately demonstrated in the washing of His apostles’ feet.
But there was another commandment as well this night, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
On this night before Jesus was betrayed, arrested, and put on trial, He instituted the Sacrament of the Mass and commissioned His Apostles and their successors throughout the ages to do what He did in the Upper Room “to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” And they did and we do here tonight celebrate the Eucharist to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
When Jesus had his intense and theologically illuminating dialog with Nicodemus, a man of the Pharisees, He said something that is probably the most quoted verse of the New Testament – “ God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
That profound teaching of Jesus states that God loves and that He gives. In response to His loving and giving, we believe in the Son He gave and through such belief we have eternal life.
But we are pilgrim people. We are on a journey towards the fullness of heaven, and as we make the journey we are to “all attain to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…” We need food and drink for the journey. We need food and drink for spiritual strength and growth.
Jesus said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life,” and that Life He gives to us so abundantly in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.
Jesus said in the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”
So on this holy night peppered with many actions, moods, and teachings, the Incarnate Son of God puts into place something most profound whereby the Incarnation remains and lives on, and which is to live in us, and enliven us.
At the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus states, “… lo, I am with you always to the close of the age.” I like the way the New English Bible translates this verse, “And be assured, I am with you always to the end of time.”
Words fail to express the profundity and to adequately express the mystery of Jesus abiding on the earth in the Blessed Sacrament thus continuing the Incarnation. What we do know from His own words is that He comes to us this night as He takes possession of the bread and wine, so that we may eat and drink Him to have His life within us. We can hold His body in our hands and touch Him and be touched by Him as so many were and as He did during His earthly ministry; and that we can bathe in His sacramental Presence as we kneel before Him to adore Him in the consecrated priest’s Host placed in the monstrance.
On this night, receive Him humbly and thankfully, and adore Him lovingly and thankfully as you keep the Watch.
I conclude with the prayer written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi, and prayed at Benediction before we receive the blessing of Jesus –
“O God, who in this wonderful Sacrament has left us a perpetual Memorial of Thy Passion; Grant us, we beseech Thee, so to venerate the Sacred Mysteries of Thy Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of Thy redemption; who livest and reignest, world without end. Amen”
+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. |
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