HOLY WEEK HOMILY

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Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are all inseparable from one another; they are all facets of the one Paschal Mystery. You'll see this, I hope, when you read the following homily that I delivered at the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday.

Everyone would agree, I think, that tonight’s feast is all about LOVE. It always amazes me, what love can do. I’d like to tell you about Walter (I’ve changed his name).

As soon as Walter walked through the door of St Benedict's Prep as a freshman it was obvious that he was staggering under some heavy emotional burdens. He couldn’t look anyone in the eye, but would stare at the floor instead, and if you asked him a question he might not respond at all, or maybe mumble a monosyllable. He plodded through each school day hiding behind the protective barriers he’d set up and avoiding human contact as much as possible. Even shaking someone’s hand seemed to be an ordeal.

So, we convinced him to live in our student residence hall, where he was a member of a group of ten other kids who, like him, were dealing with serious emotional and psychological issues. The eleven had their own separate hallway in the dorm and followed a strict schedule that includes a common study hall, frequent group therapy sessions and an individual conference once a week with one of our counselors.

    The school year quickly shifted into high gear, and I got busy with classes, and so had little contact with Walter. Then, suddenly it was time for Christmas break, which meant that Walter would be going home for the first time since the beginning of the fall semester. As the all the students were charging out the door towards their two-week break, I noticed Walter standing outside on the top step in front of the school, with a suitcase and a big laundry bag at his feet, peering nervously up the King Boulevard.

Having no idea if he’d consent to shake my hand or even acknowledge my greeting, I stepped out into the cold and offered him my hand, saying “Have a great vacation, Walt.”
He ignored my hand (Had I made a mistake by offering it?) and stared at me. Then, looking half confused, and half insulted, he looked me in the eye and asked: “What, no hug?”

Walter had been brought to life by the love and care that people

showed him. But this seems more like an Easter story. Why am I telling it tonight? Because tonight is all about love. We’re made for love, “in the image of God,” and God is love – pure self-giving love; We say God is trinity – God is relationship, a family of Father, Son and Spirit. All of this is, of course, a great mystery.

The problem for us is that God is infinite, unreachable, unhuggable; yet here we are thirsting for God, for love, and knowing that we are incomplete, unfinished. So, we try constantly to slake that infinite thirst, to fill up that God-shaped vacuum inside of us with substitutes for God, for Love.

None of these created things work, of course; they never have and never will: possessions, power, prestige, pleasures. God knew this, of course since he created us with this desire for the infinite, a desire that, it seemed, could never be satisfied. But God is relationship; God wanted to become one with us in love, and so decided to become one of us, to take human flesh, to become touchable, huggable, one with us. Love became a human person.

Now it seems I’m talking about Christmas! I’m talking about much more than that: Jesus’ many ways of loving us through his healing miracles, his teaching, his casting out demons. But this Evening, Holy Thursday, we celebrate how Christ, in a supreme demonstration of his love, gave himself up for us.

In tonight’s gospel passage we heard that Jesus “loved them to the end.” This is an example of John’s fondness for expressions with double meanings. The Greek phrase eis telon “to the end,” can mean first: the time when Jesus loved us: he loved us to the end of his life.

But the Greek can equally refer to the quality of his loving: Jesus loved us in a way that surpasses all imaginable loving. And John wants us to feel the impact of both meanings: Christ loved us so incredibly much that he gave his life for us.

It’s at this point in the last supper that Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us how Jesus instituting the Eucharist: “This is my body given for you,” “This is the cup of my blood poured out for you.” But John doesn’t mention the bread and the cup at the supper; instead he substitutes the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. By doing this, he shows us how each of us can put God’s love into action: “You see what I, your master, have done for you, my friends? You should do the same for one another.

Col. Arnaud Bertrame

What did you think, last week, when you heard about Colonel Arnaud Bertrame in the south of France, who offered to take the place of a young woman who was being held hostage by terrorists, and then was killed? What was it about his act that touched us so much? Wasn’t it that he showed us love being transformed from an emotion into action?

In the course of the Supper, John has Jesus pray several long prayers to his Father. In one of these he prays: “that all may be one,” that all of God’s children may be united in the embrace of God’s infinite love.

The students at St. Benedict’s Prep have a favorite song they sing at morning convocation; the chorus goes like this:
“You can’t choose who to love. You gotta love people!”
“You can’t choose who to love. You gotta love people!”

Well, in our country and our world, it seems that more and more people are choosing carefully who to love, and choosing others to despise, to detest, even to destroy.

This evening, as we join as one around the Eucharistic table, Jesus is asking us, commanding us, to live in such a way that our love will be an example for others, the way his life was, an example for all those people who need to hear the message of God’s unconditional, unbounded love.

Are we willing to truly become the body of Christ, to be His active,

loving presence in the world? Are we willing to work toward accomplishing Jesus’ dream of a Kingdom in which everyone washes one another’s feet, and in which no one sets boundaries to their love!

Let me end as I began. Tonight’s feast is all about love. It always amazes me, what love can do. And, love is wonderfully contagious. -- you never know who you might affect by your love.

Just ask Walter. You may find him standing on the top step with his suitcase and his laundry bag at his feet. Be careful, though: He’ll probably ask you for a hug.

                  Happy Easter!