Blessed Holy Thursday to all of you. My heart is so full as we gather to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, starting tonight with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Tonight is our opportunity to give abundant thanks to the Lord for His two great gifts of the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist, which are intimately connected. It’s no surprise that the Lord instituted both of them together, because without one, you don’t have the other. Jesus gave us the great gift of His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in this sacred and sacrificial banquet, and the priests to perpetuate that banquet until He comes again in glory. What an amazing gift. Thank you, Jesus!
Reflecting on these two great gifts, my mind went to another gift I received when I was only a teenager. I was at a retreat and there was some kind of competition with a prize for the winner, which ended up being me. I forget now what the competition was, but I definitely remember the prize. The leader at the retreat gave me a wrapped box and told me, “You can only accept this prize if you promise to use it.” Then he handed me a wrapped gift. When I opened it, it was a Catechism of the Catholic Church. Yay!? Needless to say, teenager Tom Gardner was less than impressed with that gift.
I’m ashamed to say that it was left gathering dust on a shelf for a number of years before I discovered what a great gift the Catechism is for diving more deeply into the truths of our Catholic faith. I now cherish that book for the gift it is to the whole church. I’ve loved our time together on Tuesdays the past couple of months here at St. Peter discussing the Catechism. That ordinary looking book contains riches that I never dreamed of. Just listen to the very first paragraph:
“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness, freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.”
Brothers and sisters, our Heavenly Father is close to us right now, He has given us gifts beyond all telling through His Beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Tonight is a night of joy where we enter into the depths of the mystery of Jesus’s great gifts: Himself in the Eucharist and His personal care through His priests.
As I prayed with the scriptures for this evening’s Mass, I was struck by Peter’s resistance when the Lord bowed low to wash his feet. This isn’t completely surprising. On a human level, what Jesus was doing would have shocked his apostles. During that time, the duty of washing the feet of a guest was usually reserved for the slave of the household, and if that slave was Jewish, often the master of the house would look for a Gentile slave to do it instead. This was the lowest job on the totem pole, something unthinkable for Jesus, the Master, to do.
And yet this is what He does. He takes off His outer garments and lowers Himself down to do the job of the lowest slave. In doing this, He also shows the dignity of the Apostles. It was only for the most honored guests that a slave would be provided to wash their feet. Jesus is showing the Apostles their own dignity and something even more. Rather than doing the washing at the beginning of the feast, which would have been customary, Jesus rises in the middle of the meal. He rises and begins to wash the dirt off of their feet, preparing them not just for another Passover Feast, but for a new type of Passover, the Eucharist which He was instituting on that evening with them and over which they would preside in the future as His first Bishops.
If we look at the priests of the Old Covenant, they were washed in preparation for their service in the temple. Now Jesus washes the feet of these twelve men to prepare them for service in the New Eucharistic Covenant. In this act of washing, He is ordaining them for their ministry at the Eucharistic table.
Peter allows his expectations of who Jesus would be as the Messiah to get the better of him during the foot washing. Thinking that it was beneath Jesus to do the job of a Gentile slave, Peter exclaims: “You will never wash my feet.” In his obstinance, he is refusing to acknowledge that something more than meets the eye is happening. He apparently wasn’t listening when Jesus just told him: “What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.” Peter resists, until Jesus starkly tells him: “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” Then Peter goes overboard and says that Jesus should wash his hands and head, too. Once again, Jesus sets him straight, and finally Peter allows Jesus to wash his feet. Later, Peter and the Apostles would come to recognize the depth of what Jesus was asking them to do that night. With the help of the Holy Spirit, He was setting them aside for a new type of ministry!
It is easy for us to fall into that same “you will never wash my feet” attitude with the Lord. I want Jesus to work on my terms, but don’t realize the depth of simply accepting Him as He comes to me: lowly, stripped down, with a towel and a basin, ready to wash my feet.
This is the heart of the two gifts which we celebrate tonight: the unexpected humility of our Lord. He comes to us bowed so low that it is easy for us to balk. We might think, Lord, wouldn’t it be more dramatic if you appeared to us in your risen glory at every Mass? You’re really going to come to us looking like bread and wine? And you’re going to personally work through this guy?
When I received that Catechism, I wasn’t ready to appreciate its depths, but in time I came to know the beauty of its contents. So it is with Our Blessed Lord. He comes to us in humility to meet us in our weakness with His powerful, but hidden presence. He comes to us in ways which are unexpected but tangible: hidden under the appearance of bread and wine and through the ministry of those men he calls to be ordained priests. If we are patient with these humble and powerful gifts of the Lord, we can recognize in them the beauty and riches of His wisdom.
Jesus knew that His Church would need spiritual Fathers to continue His ministry, and He knew the power that would come when people fed on His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Look at what the Lord has done through the Eucharist! And when they cooperate with the grace the Lord pours out on them, priests show us the humble, loving face of the Good Shepherd. I am humbled by the Lord’s call on me, in my unworthiness, to share in this ministry. But this is the Lord’s way. He chooses to come through humble appearances in the Eucharist and to work through ordinary men in the priesthood. These two great gifts help all of you in the church to live out your call to the common priesthood, as you respond to the Lord’s humility by humbly offering your life in sacrifice to Him. We work together!
So let us open our hearts to the Lord’s wisdom and thank and praise Him for these great gifts. The Eucharist and the priesthood are both extensions of that humble attitude of service that Jesus showed in bowing low to wash the Apostles’ feet at the Last Supper. He commanded them to imitate His model by washing each other’s feet. This is my call as priest, to humbly wash your feet by nourishing you with the Sacraments, preaching the word, and being a servant leader to our parish family. Please pray for me that I daily accept the Lord’s invitation to be an instrument of His humble service. As you all receive the humble, but powerful Sacrament of His Sacred Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, pray for the Lord to form your heart for service to those in your life.
+ Thank you Father, for the gift of your Son and His call to service. Jesus, thank you for serving us through your priests and nourishing us for service in the Eucharist. Holy Spirit, help us humbly accept the Lord as He comes to us. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +