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Holy Thursday, April 5, 2007 On this evening we focus on two events which have been remembered together but whose meanings point in opposite directions. The first is the institution of the Eucharist: Christ giving away his life, accepting the cruel death that awaits him. The second is the betrayal of Judas, a chosen friend, a loved disciple who decides to give him over into the hands of those who want to kill him. The first event is a free act of self-sacrifice, an act of love exceeding all other love; the second act, the betrayal, is an amazing expression of man’s capability to repay good with evil. The first is an act of unprecedented love and generosity, the second the ultimate act of pride and refusal of grace. The first proves better than anything else that heaven exists; the second offers fearful evidence for the power of evil and the existence of hell. For if there is an act of love that is greater and stronger than any other love, then the refusal, betrayal and rejection of that love is a greater sin and a greater manifestation of evil than what any other act. Holy Thursday, the night on which out Lord was betrayed, offers stark contrast between good and evil, grace and sin, love and rejection of love, light and darkness. This is the night when the Light of the World shines more than at any other time -- mostly on account of the contrast, as darkness attempts to extinguish all light. St. Luke reports Jesus saying, “This is the hour of darkness,” and St. John makes the laconic statement, brief and profound, as Judas leaves the scene of the Last Supper, “And there was night.” The Agony in the Garden reveals both heaven and hell at once. In vain did Jesus declare that it would have been better for Judas, the man who was to betray him, not to have been born. The human being still wants to retain throughout history the freedom to reject him, to betray him, not to let him take away the sins of the world. What a temptation to say, Love is futile, My sacrifice is useless! And yet Jesus chooses the will of the Father. No matter how the sad story of Judas wounds his heart, Jesus does not give up on man, does not let evil conquer, but moves on and responds to the Father: Your will be done. To use a famous line, this is, indeed, the last temptation of Christ, for it argues that loving is void of purpose: those who do not want to change do not change. Man is mislabeled as a “rational animal” – the human being has a capacity to reason, but tends not to follow reason. Pride and passion are stronger than reason; self-seeking is more powerful than seeking absolute truth. Man is under the order of nature and natural law, but the human being tends to pervert nature and follow lower instincts. In view of the evidence that breaks his heart and depletes his motivation for self-sacrifice, Jesus cannot but utter the astonishing words, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup” – this destiny, this fate – “pass me by.” Yet, he moves beyond this request and adds, “but your will be done” – the divine will which towers over human nature and is being worshipped here, at the agony in the Garden by the only-begotten Son, hitting the ground, wrestling with the Father’s will and sweating blood, while his best friends, the apostles, doze off into depression and a sleep of desperation, unaware of his agony. Jesus brings his will to the point of conforming to the Father’s wish and goes into death by the free acceptance of his sacrificial death. As the High Priest of mankind, he utters the unprecedented words in his last prayer in the Garden, “Father, I sacrifice myself for them so that they become holy,” and: make them holy in the truth.” These words reveal the pathway to heaven, for heaven itself is the vision of God’s truth through holiness, through sharing God’s nature by grace, through being drawn into the Son’s intimacy with the Father. For this is eternal life: to know the Son as the One whom the Father has sent and to be united with him by obedience and love, by overcoming evil with blessings, holding out faithfully in the middle of betrayals and denials, contradictions and shake-ups wherever they come from, from inside or outside, from our sinfulness or the sins of the world. As we continue this mass of Holy Thursday, by carrying out the mandate, the magnificent sign of the Foot Washing, this is in fact what we want to meditate on. As far as we know in human life, evil can always seem to outperform goodness, hatred and denial is always with us on a small or a grand scale, but the opportunities to love are never ending; they are always with us. And do not underestimate the power of prayer. In these days of the Easter celebration, I recall the memory of a deceased friend of mine. She was Catholic but of Jewish descent and was a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz and two other Nazi camps. On the day she was liberated by the allied troops, and she learned that the war was over and Hitler had committed suicide, she went to the first Catholic church she was able to find, made her confession, received Holy Communion and begged the parish priest to give her a breviary – a prayer book. And right there in the church she prayed the Office of the Dead for Hitler and his cohorts who had died with him. She wanted to pray for these most miserable of human beings at the very time millions of human beings were cursing and wishing them to hell. But she thought it was one of God’s greatest gifts to her to be able to pray for those who had persecuted her, had exterminated her family and put her through unspeakable sufferings. She thought that at this hour of liberation she was given a chance to be truly a disciple of Jesus. Let us also be disciples by enrolling into Jesus’ school of love.
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