Since
Ash Wednesday, we have been journeying through the Holy Season of Lent. Today, we enter into a new movement and rhythm of our Church’s liturgical year:
the Triduum. Each
liturgy within the three days of the Triduum helps us to enter more deeply into
the Lord’s Paschal mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.
As we
commemorate the evening when Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his
disciples, we hear how the Lord establishes the Passover tradition with the
Israelites whom he set the free from slavery in Egypt. God
announces to the Israelites - “This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which
all your generations shall celebrate.”
And indeed, modern Jews today remember and recreate that event in the
Passover meals they commemorate to this day. Like
the Israelites who were enslaved in Egypt, we were called at the beginning of
our Lenten journey to look at those things that enslaved us and that kept us
from living in the true freedom as children of the light. We
made promises and commitments to God as we wore an wristband during Lent that
announced “sacrificium” – “sacrifice”. Sometimes we kept those promises and
commitments – other times we struggled and broke them. As
our Lenten liturgies come to a close, we come today to the Holy Thursday memorial
of the Last Supper. Hopefully, the
desires and the hunger and the thirst that we have held in our hearts all
during our Lenten journey brings us hope and anticipate this evening as we get
ever closer to our celebration of the Easter mysteries.
At
the original Passover, the Israelites were to sacrifice an unblemished lamb, to
dip a branch of hyssop in the blood of the lamb, to put a smudge of the blood
on the lintels and doorpost of the house, and to eat the lamb in a ritual meal. The
Passover sacrifice was not completed with the killing of the lamb, but rather
when its flesh was consumed in their commemorative meal. In
the new covenant that Jesus established with his disciples at his Last Supper,
with his death and resurrection, Jesus becomes the eternal sacrifice that we
make each time we celebrate mass together. The
Israelites consumed the flesh of the lamb – we receive the Body and Blood of
Christ in our Eucharistic meal.
The
ritual in which Jesus washes our feet today accompanies our Eucharistic meal. Jesus
today not only washes the feet of the 12 representatives of our community
tonight – he symbolically washes all of our feet. Perhaps
it is difficult to have him wash our feet, to allow him to serve us, to enter
our lives, and to change our hearts. Perhaps there is resistance, independence, whims, and complacency that keep us
apart from Jesus, that keeps us from allowing him to wash our feet and wash
away our sins. Jesus’ role as a servant to us today does not keep him from challenging us:
“Love one another as I have loved you.” Loving
others doesn’t mean just when it is convenient and when it feels warm and
fuzzy. Loving others means bursting out
of our comfort zone and our preconceived notions. We
are called to be servants and foot washers ourselves as we live out our
discipleship each day. Today
we are called to feel the power of the gift that Christ gives us, to feel the
mission mandate he gives us with trust and hope. With
washed feet and hearts and souls fed by his Body and Blood, we ready ourselves
to celebrate the mystery of his passion and resurrection in the days to
come.
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