Coronavirus Talk 2
Pray the Our Father together
Thank you very much for being here tonight and thanks to those of you for coming back. Since we won’t be meeting on Friday and Saturday, I thought it would be good to anticipate Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil so that we can have a chance to reflect on all the important messages from those days before we meet again on Easter Sunday night. Especially during these days, it will really be a privilege to walk alongside Jesus and be with Him throughout the events of his suffering, death and resurrection. I really do believe the themes from these days will help us build up our faith, hope and love.
So the holy days begin with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. The whole Triduum is put into context by this short reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.” -Gal 6:14
Jesus Himself put into perspective what he would be going through when he says in the gospel of John: “Unless the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it will reap a rich harvest.”
In saying this, Jesus reminds us that the biggest struggle you and I face in life is surrendering our “grain of wheat” status to become a “ ripe harvest” status. Surrendering, because it is loss, is one of the shadows of death and so we naturally fear it. Jesus was no exception.
We instinctively know that some losses in life are necessary. Dr Judith Viorst, a clinical psychologist and a writer of children’s books, authored a book she titled: Necessary Losses, which she subtitled: The Loves, Dependencies and Illusions That We Have to Give Up in Order to Grow. In the book, she says that our first necessary loss happens when we crawl off our mother’s lap. We have to leave mother to become a separate self. The child in us must die so that the adult can live. The narcissist in us must die for the lover in us to live.
The road to mature human development is paved with renunciations. Throughout our life, we grow by giving up. We give up some of our deepest attachments to others. We give up cherished parts of ourselves and times of our lives. We must confront, in our dreams and aspirations, as well as in our intimate relationships, all that we will never have and all we will never be. In these days of coronavirus, in particular, we may feel as if we are renouncing, giving up, everything we once would have called real.
Because Jesus was fully human, he was not exempt from necessary losses. During these days, we get to see Him welcome these losses, and, hopefully, we will witness what he endured, for our sake and for our sins, and feel both confusion and wonder that he would love us so much and be grateful to him for showing us how surrender becomes the way out of meaninglessness and despair.
The Mass for Holy Thursday intentionally recalls the feast of the Jewish Passover. The first reading is from the book of Exodus and recounts the instructions for celebrating the Passover: “Every one of your families must procure for itself a lamb, one apiece for each household……The lamb must be a year old male and without blemish. You may take it from either the sheep or the goats…You may keep it until the 14th day of the month, and then, with the whole assembly of Israel present, it shall be slaughtered during the evening twilight. The families shall take some of its blood and apply it to the two doorposts and the lintel of every house in which they partake of the lamb. That same night they shall eat its roasted flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
“This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you shall eat like those who are in flight. It is the Passover of the Lord. For on this same night I will go through Egypt, striking down every firstborn of the land, both man and beast….But the blood shall mark the households where you are. Seeing the blood, I will pass over you; thus, when I strike the land of Egypt, no destructive blow will come upon you.” -Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14.
The reading intends to bring three Passovers into our minds: the Passover of Israel from slavery to freedom and from exile to reconciliation; the Passover of Jesus as he “passes over” to us his body and blood and reveals himself as a God who does not look down on us from above, but who is with us, among us, on the journey with us throughout our life; and the third Passover: our own, moving from sin to grace, from isolation to community, from emptiness to meaning. You and I are passing over during these days: our lives are forever marked by what we are enduring together – and our God is truly with us who believe, helping us acknowledge that the journey we are on is not an escape, it is a pilgrimage.
The second reading for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, has St. Paul recalling the first Last Supper: “…..I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you: that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” 1Cor 11:23-26
God had made covenants with humans before: with Abraham, with Moses, with David: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” Each of these covenants eventually collapsed because the humans, through idolatry and other vices, became unable and unwilling to keep their end of the bargain. But now Jesus, as fully God and fully human, has made an eternal covenant, because humanity and divinity are now joined in a unique and inseparable and unbreakable bond. Whatever lapses come between man and God due to sin, Jesus makes up for with his death. God makes a new covenant with us every day. The Eucharist we share in, As Pope Francis says so often “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
The Last Supper is the Eucharistic Meal as recounted in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Although there is a Last Supper in John’s gospel, instead of the Eucharistic Meal, we have this passage which serves as the gospel reading for the Mass of the Supper of the Lord:
“Before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end. ……..so, during the supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Master, are you going to wash my feet.?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I am doing, you do not understand no, but you will understand later.’ Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.’ Simon Peter then said to him, ‘Master, then not only my feet but my hands and head as well.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over; so you are clean, but not all.’ For he knew who would betray him; for this reason, he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’ –
So when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, ‘Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me “teacher” and “master,” and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.’” – John 13:1-15.
When you and I think about our spirituality, we usually think it involves ascending a ladder of ever-increasing holiness which leads us to God. But in the passage of the washing of the feet, Jesus shows us that there is a ladder all right, but it is God who is on the ladder, not us; and He is coming down the ladder step by step, into our lives, into human history, into this world right now which seems so scary and stinks like sweaty feet. God wants to come into our reality, and he wants to come into it as our servant. Our God is a God who kneels to wash our feet to reveal His identity and to remind us of who we need to be for one another.
You have heard the Native American proverb: “If you really want to understand someone else, walk a mile in his moccasins.” Walking in our moccasins, enduring the necessary losses that are part of being human, is the reason God gave us Jesus; and walking in our moccasins is truly the essence of God’s compassion. Compassion is not just pity; compassion means standing with another and sharing in their diminishment. In Jesus, God’s human face, God stands with us in our diminishment, even in these days; and God, in Jesus, not just suggests, but commands, that we stand with all others, without exception, in theirs.
Tomorrow night, we will meditate on the Good Friday Celebration of the Passion of the Lord.
Let’s end by reciting the Hail Mary, remembering all those affected by the virus and all those helping to treat it.