Last
week, I received an email from Riley Manning, the religious reporter for the Tupelo
Daily Journal. This is one of the
questions he asked me: For those who may not know, what is Holy Week and why is
it important?
A. In
answering that question, I paraphrased a quote from Pope Benedict XVI, who
stated that during Holy Week, we Christians reenact, relive, and share in the
mystery of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. In many ways, the events
of Holy Week tell us what our faith is all about.
We
find ourselves commemorating Holy Thursday today in the middle of Holy Week. One
event of significance we have in our Holy Thursday liturgy is the establishment
of the Eucharist for us as followers of Christ. Paul
tells us the simple and profound words of Jesus during the Passover that he
celebrates with his disciples: “This is my body that is for you. Do this in
remembrance of me.” In
those words, Jesus gives us the gift of the Eucharist and the mandate that goes
with it as well. Paul
goes on to say: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you
proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”
Perhaps it is the washing of the feet of the twelve representatives of our
community of faith, representing Christ’s disciples, that helps explains to us
what the Eucharist means to us and how we are to live out our lives of faith in
the mandate Jesus gives to us. Last
year at this Holy Thursday mass, Pope Francis, who had recently been elected
pope, made headlines all over the world for what he did. Normally, the pope celebrates Holy Thursday at one of the major basilicas in
Rome, either St Peter or St John Lateran. The
pope usually washes the feet of 12 priests during the mass, symbolizing the 12
apostles. However, last year, he visited a youth prison for the Holy Thursday celebration,
bathing the feet of 12 inmates, which included 2 women and 2 Muslims. That was the first time that women had ever
been included in the foot washing ceremony on Holy Thursday as celebrated by a
pope. This
evening, we will have the foot washing of 12 representatives of our community
of faith. However, all of us present
today should feel Jesus washing our feet. Perhaps
some of us feel resistance in our lives of faith right now. Perhaps we are resistant to have Jesus wash
our feet just as Peter was resistant. Perhaps
we don’t want Jesus to wash our feet, to give himself to us, to let him be
servant for various reasons. Perhaps we want our independence: to live according to our own laws and the
laws of man rather than the laws of God. Perhaps
we don’t want to admit that we need to healed or saved or washed. Or
perhaps we don’t feel worthy. Perhaps this year during Holy Week, God is
calling us to name that part of ourselves that we need to surrender to him,
that we need Jesus to love and to embrace, to wash and to clean.
Jesus
gives us a mandate in the Gospel as he washing the feet of his apostles in a
show of servanthood – to follow his model and to do for our brothers and
sisters what Jesus has done for us. The
Gospel tells us that Jesus loved his own in the world and he loved them to the
end. We are to love in the same way. As
Jesus washes our feet today, we are to feel love and gratitude in our hearts . The way we approach the Eucharist and to live
out the Eucharist, both today and everyday, is to flow out of that love and
gratitude.
Today we enter into the three days of
liturgies before Easter – it is called the Triduum. As we
celebrate Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday together as a community
of faith here at St James, let us see these three days of holy liturgies as a
single prayer of final preparation as we enter into the redemption of humanity
and the salvation of the world that is made present in the death and
Resurrection of our Lord.
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