HOMILY FOR HOLY THURSDAY (EVENING MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER) (2)

HOMILY FOR HOLY THURSDAY (EVENING MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER)

THEME: COURAGEOUS MISSION OF JESUS

BY: Fr. Jude Chijioke

HOMILY FOR THURSDAY APRIL 14 2022

Readings: Exodus 12: 1-8, 11-14; 1 Cor. 11:23 – 26; John 13: 1 -15.

“Holy Thursday commemorates the courageous mission of Jesus which is symbolically expressed in his humble service to his disciples and his encouraging call to image him in the world. This call and mission found expression as Jesus transformed the Jewish Passover meal in a way which portrays a new Exodus and march to freedom.” (J. Vacco). This mission of love is carried out with series of allusive acts which in themselves are categorical.

First is a farewell banquet which according to the Synoptics was celebrated exactly on the Eve of Easter, for John, as Ratzinger affirms, it would be a dinner on the Eve of a Feast. Before this begins, he performs an act unusual considering the mentality of the time, he gets up from the table and, girding a towel around his waist, poured some water in a basin, bends down to wash the feet of each of his disciples and to dry them. This is a maximum expression of the gift of self, granted resolutely and without reserve.

On this gesture, Jesus found a pedagogy: if I, whom you call Teacher, wash your feet, you too must wash one another’s feet, that is, you too must be capable of heroism to the point of stripping the ego and mutually serving one another so that nothing but mutual love exists among you. The washing of the feet, simple and at the same time grandiose expresses the all-encompassing reality of love that springs from a person’s heart, an outward reflection of a sincere and genuine interiority, which shuns any exhibitionism and encourages the setting of a new life criterion set in mutual, dedicated, and responsible service towards the other.

In this banquet, it is the Lord himself who takes the bread, breaks it, and distributes it to all, and this sharing itself signifies service or self-donation: Jesus offers himself unreservedly and resolutely to his followers, without asking for anything in return, aware that he will have to leave them shortly thereafter. In distributing the bread, he exclaims: “This is my body.” Jesus did not say “This bread is my body.” The term “this” (also used for wine) is a neutral that refers not to the bread present there, but precisely to his own body, to his flesh. If Christ said “this bread is my body” the bread would only be a symbol, but it would not be substantially transformed into Him, in short, it would remain bread. Instead, the “this is my body” indicates that that bread has changed its substance, even if it appears physical bread with all its attributes, has actually become his own body, his flesh in short, the life that is given for us, which in oriental language means “this is me.” Analogous situation for the wine, which becomes in effect his blood. It then inaugurates the new covenant with God, since, while the ancient sacrifices used the blood of bulls to seal covenants between God and his people, it is the same Blood of Christ that establishes the true definitive covenant, the one for which in Christ our sins are atoned.
“Do this in memory of me” is an invitation to perpetuate the gestures just described over time and to present the same body and blood of the Lord every time we gather “in the breaking of bread and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). In the celebration of the “memorial” of this supper it also happens that the bread and wine present on the altar change in substance into that of the Body and Blood of Christ and that same sacrifice Jesus made of himself on the cross occurs again. Jesus returns in his spontaneous immolation for us, lets himself “consumed” by us. The Eucharist is in fact the life of Christ who gives himself to us; the life of the Church whose radiating power cannot but edifies the world. Therefore, we should not “get used to” this great Sacrament, but it would be necessary to approach it every time as if it constituted a novelty, to avoid the risk that with the passage of time it is consumed with less and less regard. In the real and substantial presence, guaranteed by Jesus “every day until the end of time” through the ministry of priests, Jesus assures us that it is his concern not to leave us orphans in our entire path of Christian vocation and mission. It is a real and substantial presence because it is precisely, He, Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity, who is present in the species of bread and wine and He Himself is constantly present in a concrete form in any place there is even a single consecrated particle. The gift of the Holy Spirit will make us feel and understand more his presence among us.

Fr. Jude Chijioke