I love the line in the beginning of our Gospel today: "Jesus loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” Jesus’ love for humanity is evident through the Gospels: the healing of the sick, the compassion for the sinner, the love for the poor and the outcast, the way he wants people to repent, to change their lives, to receive eternal life. Jesus, the king of kings, gets up from the table as he is sharing a meal with his disciples and he washes their feet. He could be elevated about all things, but instead, he chooses to serve. It is interesting to me that one of the saints who most exemplified God’s love and a spirit of service and charity, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, is also one of the saints that is most closely tied to love of the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ that we receive when we gather around the Lord’s table. A biography about her life states that: “Mother Teresa believes that the union the sisters experience with Jesus in Holy Communion is inseparable from their lives.” Christ himself in his presence at the Eucharist renewed and refreshed Mother Teresa and her fellow nuns every morning at Mass before they started their work of serving the poor. “Our life is linked to the Eucharist,” Mother Teresa would frequently say. She stated very simply and very humbly that without beginning each day with Jesus in Communion, she and her sisters could do nothing. This evening, we start our commemoration of the Triduum, three days of liturgies that are the highpoint of our Church’s liturgical year. As we celebrate in the spirit of the Last Supper tonight with Christ and his disciples, let us hear Jesus call out to us: Are you willing to humble yourself, to reach out to your brothers and sisters in love and charity? Are you willing to serve? Are you willing to partake of my body and blood around my altar, to live out the spirit of Eucharist each day of your lives? May we answers those questions with our words and our actions.
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