Holy Thursday
April 5, 2012
Reading I: Exodus 12: 1-8, 11-14
Responsorial Psalm: 116: 12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18
Reading II: 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26
Gospel: John 13: 1-15
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040512-evening-mass.cfm
Wouldn't it be strange if in some situation, whether a meeting with the governor general or a birthday party for the three-year-old, we got so much caught up in the formalities that we missed the personal contact. I am moved to this reflection by an article in today's paper about the style of the Governor of Victoria, Alex Chernov. (LINK)
Does this happen with the Eucharist? How much thought, analysis, interpretation and argument has gone into our effort to understand this mystery. For me, at this stage of my life, it is all vain, all empty. I choose to think that what we call the 'last supper' was the passover celebration that Jesus had the disciples prepare in that large furnished room. A memorable occasion for many reasons, not least that it was perhaps the biggest celebration they had ever had together. There seems no reason not to include the women and children: indeed the Passover custom was to invite neighbours to come together for the occasion. Is it likely that Jesus went against that tradition to make it an all-male, apostles-only affair? The gospel writers didn't say anything about the passover meal. There was nothing exceptional to report. Only the two gestures, washing the disciples' feet beforehand, and the breaking of a loaf of bread to share among them along with a cup of wine as a very simple ritual after the meal was ended. This came to be the way Christians remembered him.
Why? What did it mean in those following weeks and months, in those early years, to remember Jesus? I don't know. I wasn't there. But I like to wonder what it might have meant to them, to those who had fond memories of him, and those who learnt about him from stories told, and those who gradually found their eyes opened to wider horizons. Especially powerful perhaps were the memories of his strength, a deep calm strength that you could feel when you saw him face up to some bullying smart-alec pharisee. The gospel writers rarely mention it. They just allow it to come through in their stories.
I have met a few people who had strength like that. They could share themselves.
There is no magic in the Eucharist, the Thanksgiving, the Remembering. Nor are our ways of sharing in his strength limited to formal times of breaking bread and drinking a pledging cup, although when we do this formally we polish up the memory and make it real by the ritual of performance.
Person to person, the life that Jesus talked about living to the full is right here and now among us, wherever we are, whoever we're with. It can be extended and strengthened when we reach out beyond the friends we feel comfortable with, to give a little something to a stranger, or to give some big help to someone who needs it. Or even to fight for justice and truth, putting our reputation and good name on the line for a cause worth fighting for. Follow the leader: that's all. It cost him his life, and the news is daily full of stories of people getting killed in their fight for freedom in their country, for their children.
When we break ourselves open, the way you break a bun or a bread stick. We might break open our heart, our home, or beak into our time. We might drink to our commitment to really do what we actually can instead of hoarding, to spend our strength instead of conserving it. Not once, I think, does any gospel report that Jesus said he was offering his life as a sacrifice or reconciliation to appease the anger of god. He does say in many different ways that he is giving himself for his friends, and at this last passover meal he invites his friends to follow him when their turn comes.
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John's gospel reports that Jesus prayed at length during the Passover meal. 'That they may be one, as you Father in me and I in you, may they be one in us.' These days that prayer is applied to ecumenism, the hope for healing of the Reformation and other division that have occurred in the churches. I think the prayer might also be for unity among all those who acknowledge his name, whatever their church belonging: a unity of purpose, of acceptance, of respect and love. It seems such a waste of energy to worry about unifying traditions and cultures that are so diverse, steeped as they are historically in particular concerns to incarnate different aspects of the mystery, when we could just work side by side as christians the way we do as citizens, allowing for the differences while enjoying the harmony of purpose that expresses our deep unity.
But no, we won't do that this year, will we. As institutions the churches will continue to celebrate their diversity by opposing the others, each one claiming to be the most genuine or even the only authentic one, the others being bogus, invalid expressions of the purpose of Jesus, non-representative swill, as one Australian Prime Minister once described 'the other place' in that house on the hill.