Holy Thursday 9th April 2020
Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
The celebration of Mass took place at 7pm – Parishioners and others joined via the webcam.
First Reading: from Exodus 12:1-8
Instructions concerning the Passover meal.
Responsorial Psalm:
115 The blessing cup that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ.
Second Reading: from St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 11:23-26
Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming he death of the Lord.
Gospel: according to John 13:1-15
Now he showed how perfect his love was.
My few words:
At the beginning of Mass:
We gather again – at a distance – to begin to celebrate the Easter Triduum. These days are the high point of our celebration of Christian faith. These liturgies set us apart from others.
Over the next few days we celebrate the great act of love of our God experienced through the Eucharist, the Cross, the Resurrection.
And so this evening we gather with Jesus and the apostles in the Upper Room. Let us listen not only with our ears but also with our minds eye and our hearts as the Lord speaks to us and shows us how to live.
As we begin let us bring before God ourselves and our loved ones asking God for whatever we need to get through these days.
After the Gospel:
Our lives at this present time, like the images we have for Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter are full of contradictions.
We are told to look after each other during this coronavirus crisis – yet to do this effectively we must stay at home.
We’re only a phone call away from others but physically we must be two metres apart.
We gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper or as it is also called the Last Supper, but it’s also a celebration of the First Mass.
And in another twist, the liturgy gives us Jesus washing feet, not the actual words of the institution of the Eucharist.
We have God dying on a Cross and a human being rising from the dead, leaving the tomb empty.
In this coronavirus crisis a lot of people are praying but our Churches are closed.
We’re not supposed to visit graveyards and yet I was always told – beware of the living, not the dead!
And the one contradiction/difficulty that I struggle with these days and its very apparent in our celebration this evening – we gather to celebrate the institution of the Eucharist, to listen and hear the words of Jesus as the apostles heard them for the first time: Take this bread, my Body and eat it; Take this wine, my Blood and drink it – and this evening, above all evenings you at home cannot. At Communion time you are asked to make an Act of Spiritual Communion.
As priests we are being inventive in how we celebrate the liturgy from a distance, and I did put it to some of my priest friends, how we could distribute Holy Communion? I suggested some sort of drive thru – I didn’t get an enthusiastic positive response. Let’s keep thinking!
In a sense we are living in a kind of Penal Law time again: and we know now how Catholics in Africa or South America or Australia and indeed in certain parts of Europe feel when they only have Mass maybe once a month or even less frequently.
In the Old Testament and in the life of Jesus spiritual food from heaven was nourishment for the soul – the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion is nourishment for our souls – yet you are being denied. The theologians would be aghast if I suggested consecrating bread and wine from a distance via technology as you sat at home in your own ‘Upper Room’.
These last few months have changed the world – we will be the better for it all in the end and the lessons we are learning, if we allow them to mould our future, will continue to do good. And as one man put it to me during the week – we have learned one very important lesson, that, we, human beings, are not in charge anymore. There is a higher power. We call that higher power, God; and in this evenings Gospel Jesus, the Son of God, gave us an example of how to do good – to wash the feet of others. These strange days has seen many of us do things we would not normally do – work from home; be taught by our teachers from home; spend more time together as a family; talk more together; pray together; have fun together; cut grass, paint fences, go for walks, clean, tidy, cook – and the clean, tidy, cook is for all family members! Maybe we have offered our time as a local volunteer to help others who are housebound. Washing the feet of others, doing things we would not normally do – this washing and doing takes on many forms.
Jesus in his life and in the stories he told made us think differently about life and death and about how we treat others and ourselves. He was the true contradiction, the real paradox. In these strange coronavirus days we too are being challenged to act and think differently for the good of all.
At the end of Mass:
Please join me tomorrow at 3pm for the Passion and at 7pm for the Stations of the Cross.
On Saturday at 7pm we will gather for the Easter Vigil. Have an unlit candle and some water on the table for that celebration.
Keep safe and well and keep your distance!