Holy Thursday
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
March 28, 2024
A Tragic Hour
Very early on Wednesday morning, an outbound ship collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge, bringing it down and leading to the tragic loss of life. It is an hour that none of us will ever forget. It is an hour that family members who lost loved ones will never forget. It will go down as a tragic hour in the history of Baltimore.
Even if we are only indirectly affected by this heartbreaking event, it is seared in our memories and stands as a testament to the fragility of human life and achievement. Witnessing the sudden separation that death brings in its wake, we are drawn closer to families and loved ones, understanding, if only for a moment, how quickly death can separate us from those we hold near and dear.
Entering into the “Hour” of Jesus
Confronted with this tragic hour, what shall we do? How do we move forward? Let me suggest that this Mass of the Lord’s Supper gives us a way forward. For the very mystery that we celebrate tonight inserts us into another “hour”, into that sacred “hour” when Jesus ‘would pass from this world to the Father,’ when Jesus would lay down his life for the redemption of the world. For the hour of his Passion and Death is the most decisive hour in human history, the hour when Christ’s love for his disciples and for us would reach its apex – This is what tonight’s Gospel means when it says that Jesus . . . “loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end” . . . that is, to the point of laying down his life for them and indeed for us.
What does it mean to be inserted into this most decisive hour in human history? Do we merely imagine that we are in a different time and place, as if pretending to be guests at the Last Supper . . . as if seated next to Peter or James or John, having Jesus wash our feet, and having Jesus hand us the Bread broken and the Blood outpoured? Is our remembrance of the Lord’s Supper a futile exercise in nostalgia, a vain longing for a past event that can never be recovered? After all, it is tempting to long for the past, even perhaps, to live in the past. How often we would like to go back in time to change the course of our lives, to alter decisions which, in hindsight, are proven unwise, or to undo the harm we inflicted on others, or to avert tragedies.
Yet, this Mass of the Lord’s Supper, like every Mass, is neither an exercise in nostalgia nor a flight of imagination. For the sacred meal, the Last Supper, that we commemorate tonight a meal that encompasses the Lord’s saving Death and Resurrection, remains not only valid but alive and real and present in and through the Church, for all times, all places, all cultures, until the Lord returns in glory. The Lord’s gift of self to his disciples is what he gives us anew tonight. This is how we actually enter into and truly participate in that hour upon which the history of the world and our destiny hinges.
Put another way, the Mass and the Sacraments are the means by which you and I have living contact with what Jesus did to save us. They are the God-given way in which we enter into the “hour” of Jesus – so that our lives and our experience might be joined to his . . . Therefore: When the Scriptures are read, it Christ speaks to us words of spirit and life. When water is poured, it is Christ cleanses and gives new life and innocence. When absolution is said, it is Christ who forgives the sins we have committed. When bread is blessed, broken, it is Christ’s Body given us. When wine is consecrated, it is Christ’s Blood poured out for our salvation. In and through the Mass, not only is Christ truly present, but also present is everything he said and did to bring about our salvation, especially the Lord’s Death and Resurrection. Living contact with what the Lord did to save us so long ago is possible only in the power of the Holy Spirit, by the Christ to whom all time and all the ages belong, the Christ we acclaim as the Alpha and the Omega of history.
What, Then, Shall We Do?
What, then, shall we do? What shall we do in this tragic hour for our community? What shall we indeed do with every other hour when we have stumbled, sinned, and suffered? Let us, you and I, give ourselves to the One who gives himself to us, by believing in the power of the Eucharist to redeem the hours and moments of our brief existence in this world, opening up our brief span of time on this earth to the everlasting joy of heaven.
Many people think that going to Mass every Sunday is burdensome and useless. Sunday, after all, is a day to sleep in, to watch sports, to go out to dinner. And, doesn’t the same thing happens every week at church? One Mass melds into another. You’ve heard one homily, you’ve heard them all. People ask: “Who needs this monotonous experience week after week?” The short answer is, “We do!” You and I. And we need it more than we think. For ‘without the Lord we can do nothing.’ Without communion with his Presence and Saving love, we cannot be his followers or live as his followers. Only when our many days are joined sacramentally to that single day when Christ our high priest consummated his life, only then can we be, in name and in fact, Christians, members of Christ’s Body, the Church. When our hours of joy and hope, suffering and pain are joined to his hour our experience begin to make sense, and we are able to find in a broken world hope of life everlasting. So it is that the Church calls us to Sunday worship, not because the Eucharist is lacking in its power to save, but because we are both impervious and fragile . . . and thus need to be renewed and strengthened by living contact with Christ.
So, let us rejoice as Jesus washes our feet and sets before us the Paschal Meal: rejoice in the cleansing waters of baptism and the cleansing tears of penance; rejoice in Jesus’ eucharistic gift of self in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the true presence of the One who loved us to the very end. Let us rejoice in the gift his priesthood which lives on in the royal priesthood of the baptized and in the ordained priesthood of us, your brothers, called to lead and serve the Church in Word and Sacrament. Thus are we all inserted into the hour of Jesus, that hour when he overcame the forces of sin and the powers of darkness, that hour when grace triumphed over sin and life triumphed over death. At the end of Mass the altar will be stripped, the Church will be darkened and we are invited to spend an hour adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us keep watch with him in silent and prayer and then, let us pick up our Cross and follow him all the way to Calvary.