Holy Thursday
March 24, 2005

If I choose only two of the topics which belong to this celebration, a lifetime would not be enough to understand them. The first is the Eucharist: the last and ultimate act of God’s coming, his ultimate Incarnation, his arrival to the human being as food and drink. The second is the betrayal which happened the same night, was revealed during the same meal and led to the peak of his agony in the Garden a few hours later. St. Paul already told us that the two are intimately linked. We have just heard how his account of the Last Supper begins: “On the night he was handed over he took bread and said ‘this is my body.’”

In a response to our betraying him, he gave himself away. As he was about to be handed over, he handed over himself. The same word is being used not only in the translation but also in the original text: the same night Jesus is being handed over by Judas to those who want to kill him, he hands himself over to his disciples, not only to the Twelve, but to all disciples of all time, so as to be mingled into our lives, consumed as food, be part of our daily life, be a participant in our seemingly capricious destiny, become a fellow traveler with us in the vale of woe, to be a companion on our death march, our inevitable journey to the last phase and last moment of a mortal life.

The two meanings of “being handed over” are ultimately not so different. In the Garden of Gethsemane when Judas approaches leading the temple guards and the Roman cohort, Jesus repeats the word, saying: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be handed over to sinful man. Now, literally, he is in the possession of sinners, and by this statement he shows how deeply he understands that his role was to become a voluntary victim of human sinfulness. And although we approach the altar with words of repentance in our minds and on our lips, although we say “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,” we know well that when he is handed over to us in the form of bread – placed on our hand or placed on our tongue it really does not matter – he is given over to sinful man and he becomes involved in our lives that are not only imperfect but sinful. The hand that received him was an instrument of many sinful acts, that tongue on which he is placed was a tool of lies, gossips, hatred, self-praise, arrogance, unchaste words or humiliating comments.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus manifested his willingness to get involved into our company, our misery, our struggles up to the point of volunteering to keep us company to the last act of our lives, our death.

This is why the Eucharist is not just one of the many rituals out of many and various sacramental acts of the church. It means the terminal, final station of God’s journey to us in the incarnation. It is in distributing himself in the form of bread and wine that the Incarnation, God’s descent into human realm, makes a last statement of commitment. The words “This is my body” do not simply mean that what looks like food and drink is a hidden form of presence for Jesus. It means more in two dimensions

First, there is a qualification added: this is my body to be given away for you, a body to be broken, blood to be poured out. This is my physical, incarnate self, at the threshold of death. This is my body ready to be destroyed and distributed and consumed in the process. The Christ we receive in the Eucharist is Jesus’ risen and glorified body, but the body he gave away, was his mortal and perishable body, which he voluntarily gave over to be destroyed and distributed as he pronounced those words at the Last Supper.

Second, the body given over crosses the last gap between God and man as Jesus comes to act out his mortality. So far, for 33 years, he, the divine Son, sharer of the immortal life of God, lived the life of a mortal man; now he takes the last step of undergoing the dehumanizing process of dying in the most dehumanizing way: by undergoing violence, by being defenseless, overpowered, defeated, physically and psychologically violated, his ministry becomes officially rejected, ridiculed, like an object he is sold for 30 silver pieces, like an animal he is slaughtered, becoming a lifeless cadaver dwelling in a tomb.

The Eucharistic bread in which he gives himself as bread broken and wined poured into a cup, plays out this fearfully, astonishingly real pantomime: he accepts the process of dying and disappearance for the sake of entering into the very heart of our life. and, in fact, when becoming my nourishment and drink, he penetrates my life, begins carrying out the purpose of his mission as he undertakes to transform us from within and builds us into living cells of his mystical Body, the Body of the church, a body built of those who eat his body and drink his blood.

There are two practical life issues that I would like to add to this meditation about the Eucharist, two conclusions that must affect the way we change ourselves as human beings and as Christians.

First, the Eucharist is a tool by which Jesus penetrates by his presence and grace our actions, our activities, our way of taking care of human needs, of serving each other. The Gospel of John makes only a brief reference to the meal – the eating and drinking at the Last Supper. But it makes plenty of comments that the point of the celebration was to turn the disciples into imitators of Jesus’ love, obliging them to love as their master and teacher had loved. No Eucharist is truly celebrated if it does not prompt in us decisions and commitments to serve others, to go on delivering and distributing ourselves into food and drink, tools of nourishment and sustenance, refreshing and exhilarating other human lives. Jesus becomes a slave, Jesus washes feet, Jesus humiliates himself – this is the path of love he has chosen. His definition of love is not a trip into self-fulfillment and self-validation but an act that brings lives into communion and serves them on their journey to the Father.

Second, Jesus’ purpose in the Eucharist is to extend his presence and to make his life on earth not just disappear but to be sacrificed, reborn and become abundant both sacramentally and morally. The Eucharist, its vigor, its perpetuation, its presence in our churches, on our Sundays, in our weekly and daily lives has a dignity and importance unparalleled in the life of the church. When Jesus calls men to the priesthood, we cannot be uninterested spectators or maybe curious spectators, not even just sympathetic bystanders or wishful beneficiaries. In a Church that undergoes crisis, the extension and perpetuation – and renewal -- of the priesthood as the fountainhead of priestly ministry is a number one priority for all Catholics. Holy Thursday is a feast of the priesthood, should be a day of prayer for our priest and bishops, must be the day on which our care for Jesus’ testament and work on earth becomes supported by all of us. This should be a day on which we welcome and promote in thought, prayer, speech and action the growth of new, saintly life into the ministry of the priesthood, into putting into action the meaning and intention of the Last Supper. This is the day on which we ask the Lord: Give holy priestly lives to your Church. Amen.

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