Today, we begin three important days in
our Catholic faith: the Holy Triduum. The Easter Triduum consists of three days
that prepare us for the holy day of Easter: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil Mass.
These
three days are a Triduum of the Passion of our Lord.
The commemoration of Holy Week has a very
important message for us as modern disciples of Christ. The message is this: God does not abandon his people – God is
there for his people to deliver them from whatever weighs them down and from
whatever enslaves them. God does not
want us to be enslave. He wants us to
have the freedom to follow our faith. It
is important to recognize that Holy Week is not just a nostalgic memory of the
past. Holy Week is a memory that is
alive and real, that give hope in the daily reality of our lives, in the reality
of our journey of faith.
In the Last Supper that Christ shared
with his disciples, he gives us an example of service and humility that we are
to emulate on our own journey.
Christ
celebrate the Last Supper with the richness of symbol and ritual in the midst
of his own Jewish faith. This ritual
supper of the Jewish Passover was converted into a memorial dedicated to him as
the Son of God, a memorial that we as his disciples are to practice and celebrate
and live. As modern disciples of Christ,
we participate in the new life we have in Christ if we collaborate in his
ministry and his service, if we follow his example of humility and mercy,
abandoning are own egos and self-interest.
Without a doubt, we know that Jesus is
God’s presence with us. His actions are
the actions of the Father. Jesus’ love
and mercy are the same love and mercy are the same as the love and mercy of God
the Father. Through our service to our
brothers and sisters, through our acts of mercy and charity, we participate in
the divine life here in the midst of our human existence on earth.
We celebrate the presence of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, that is with us in our Holy Thursday mass. We celebrate the presence of Jesus Christ in
the Eucharist. of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who washed his disciples feet
and we gave us the Eucharist to sustain us.
This is our Lord Jesus Christ who came to earth as a servant. As we begin the Holy Trinity today with our
Holy Thursday mass, we have the opportunity to reflect upon the words of St
Vincent DePaul: “His humiliations were nothing less than love. His work here on earth was love. His sufferings was love. His prayers were love. This workings of his interior and exterior
were not more than repeated actions of love.
In his love, Christ gave us an example that is so different from many of
the values of our secular world, very different from the riches and pleasures
and honors of the world.” May the love
of Christ, the example of Christ, that we celebrate today on Holy Thursday, be
the guiding light of our lives.
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