Holy Thursday talk by Abbot of local monastery
03.28.05 (1:21 am) [edit]Below is the Holy Thrusday talk given by the abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers Ga. It is well worth reading. The monastery is a great place to visit and it has a large retreat house. People of all faiths or none are welcome. Here is the web page trappist.net
peace and a blessed Easter to all
Mitch
Holy Mother Church with our beautiful liturgical year has brought us to Holy Thursday, the night when we celebrate what the world knows as the Lord’s Last Supper. It’s interesting in the Gospels that so much of Jesus’ ministry is centered around eating and drinking many meals with his friends [1]. For the Jews it was and, as far as I know, remains a sacred act. We celebrate the Last Supper this year in the midst of the Year of the Eucharist [2]. Our community just had its retreat. The retreat was centered on the Eucharist [3]. The Eucharist is a great mystery. We must remember that always. It is a gift to us which we will probably never fully fathom or understand. Yet, even so, we have to look at it to understand it, to begin to appreciate it. One thing that came to me very strongly this year—which I believe will stay with me a long time—is that I believe you and I have to become Eucharist. The Gospel that is given to us this evening is about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. One might understandably wonder why the Gospel is not a more focused offering of “This is my Body. This is my Blood.” We do have that in the second reading. It is Jesus’ gift of priesthood not just to priests but to the world, to the Church. Yet, the Gospel for this evening is about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. It seems to me that the washing of the feet is really just another aspect of Eucharist—just another aspect of Jesus’ love. During our retreat, one of our retreat-givers (one of our monks) spoke of human love and how all of us have a desire to give ourselves to one another. When we’re deeply in love with someone, we almost want to merge with the other person—to become one with the other person. But we don’t know how to do that. It seems impossible. And so it is with us, but not for God. God in the Eucharist did just that. Jesus took simple things—bread and wine—which were the common fare of the people, the common thing of every day—and said, “This is my body. This is my blood” (Mt 26:26-28). Jesus, too, had that desire to become one with us. The Eucharist is certainly one of the central ways for Catholics through which that can happen. But the whole world is not Catholic. It’s a big world and there are many people who don’t know who Jesus is or what the Gospel is. I maintain that we have to become Eucharist for those people because they may never in their lifetime manage to go through all the things they would have to go through to become Catholics—read the Gospel and understand the Catholic Church. Jesus has many presences. One of those presences is us. It’s pretty clear. If you have the time before Easter, or even after Easter, read the last discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John (chapters 13-17) where Jesus gathered with those whom he loved and poured himself out. But it wasn’t enough to do it in words. He did it in actions. He washed his disciples’ feet. And that is about to happen here again. I’ll take off my robes, and I’ll wash the brothers’ feet. It’s pretty dramatic from the “outside looking in.” A priest, in this case the abbot of the monastery, washes the feet of his brothers. The pope, when in good health, does it as well. But it’s not enough to watch. Jesus said that he gave us an example so that we could do this for one another. I don’t think he was strictly speaking about the act of washing each other’s feet. He was talking about loving one another. He was talking about becoming Eucharist for one another—feeding one another not just with food and drink but with our lives. All of us do that, but this is a call and a time to commit ourselves to it anew. It is time to say, “Yes, I wish to become Eucharist. Consecrate me. If you can do it to bread and wine, you can certainly do it to me. Let me be broken and shared and given to my brothers and sisters.” Of course, it’s not just giving. It’s receiving as well. Eucharist means thanksgiving—a life of thanksgiving. A life poured out. As we celebrate this Last Supper which became the first Eucharist —the Last Supper, the first Eucharist—I say to you, let the Eucharist grow beyond this moment that we share on Sunday (and for some of us every day of the week). Let’s become walking Eucharist. Living Eucharist. Let’s dare to ask God to transform us so that, as Jesus wished and commanded, we learn to love as he loves (Jn 13:34).
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