Mass of the Lord’s Supper

April 14, 2022

Fr. John C. Garrett

 

To hear some people talk, tonight’s Mass is the Mass of the Foot-Washing rather than the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. I think many people would be surprised to hear that the foot-washing was only insert into the Mass in 1955; prior to that it was a ritual that was done apart from Mass. People would be even more surprised to learn that the foot-washing is an option, and does not have to be done. In fact we are not going to do it tonight.

One reason I decided not to do the foot-washing tonight is because there continues to be concerns about the pandemic. Even before the pandemic it was often difficult to find 12 people who were willing to have their feet washed. Too much time was spent trying to find volunteers for something that is merely an option. The other reason I decided not to do the foot-washing this year is my knees have been giving me a lot of pain of late.

Frankly, in some parishes the foot-washing has gotten out of hand. Instead of a simple, beautiful act, re-presenting the Lord’s humility in the 13^th chapter of St. John’s Gospel, it has at times become a major spectacle. I seen it where everyone came up to have their feet washed, or people washed each other’s feet, or hands. In those parishes the focus of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper seems to be lost.

So what is suppose to be the focus of tonight’s Mass? The priesthood and the Eucharist. Both the Eucharist and the priesthood “were born” during the Last Supper and the two sacraments of the Eucharist and Holy Orders are so closely linked because without the priesthood we would have no Eucharist. St. Pope John Paul II had a tradition of writing a letter to the priests in the world on Holy Thursday. In one of those letters he wrote, “We were born from the Eucharist. If we can truly say that the whole Church lives from the Eucharist…we can say the same thing about the ministerial priesthood: it is born, lives, works and bears fruit “de Eucharistia.” [from the Eucharist] There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood, just as there can be no priesthood without the Eucharist.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas, toward the end of his life, was asked to write a compendium on Eucharistic theology, to encapsulate all that we as Catholics believe about the Eucharist. He wrote and he wrote and he wrote, until he could write no more, and in a rare moment of frustration, he took the manuscript that he was writing and threw it at the foot of the crucifix. The story is that the corpus, the figure of Christ on the Cross, came to life and spoke to St. Thomas Aquinas. Jesus said: “Thomas Aquinas, no one has written as well as you have concerning my Eucharistic body and blood. Whatever it is that you want the most, I will grant you.”

Imagine if Jesus spoke to you, right here, right now, and said to you, “Whatever it is you want most in the world, I will grant to you.” What would you say? What would I say? What would I really say? Thomas Aquinas looked at the Lord squarely in the eyes and said three little words, NOTHING BUT YOU. What do you want most in the world? Nothing but you.

Thomas Aquinas knew that if he has Jesus in the Eucharist, he has everything. Padre Pio once said: “It would be easier for the world to survive without the sun, than to do without Holy Mass.” The Eucharist is the single most important thing in the universe, the most precious gift that God has given to man. It is not just a sign, not just a symbol. It is Christ, true God, true man, sacramentally present to us in the form of bread and wine that is, after consecration, truly, substantially changed into Christ’s body and blood. The Eucharist is not just a “nice thing,” not merely a symbolic sign of sharing and community, it is Christ’s true Body and true Blood.

At Holy Mass, we come to celebrate the single greatest gift. God, the second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, the Son of God, comes to us, to feed, to strengthen, to nourish us in the simplest of accidents, the simplest of food, the staple of the diet of the Palestinian culture of Jesus’ day, bread and wine. He who created the stars of the universe, who fashioned the heavens, who singlehandedly harrowed the halls of hell, freeing all of humanity from the snares of Satan by his death and resurrection, he comes to us in this simple, humble way. Jesus, ever meek and humble of heart, the Sacred Heart whom we honor and adore, this Jesus comes to us as food; he enters us, becomes one with us, and, unlike earthly food which becomes integrated into us, this heavenly food makes us becomes more and more like him whom we receive.

There are moral implications of our reception of Holy Communion. How is our day different because we have received Holy Communion? Do I recognize the Christ who lives in you and transforms you more and more by the Communion that you had received? Do we strive to see Christ in each other and then to be Christ to each other, recognizing that everyone whom we meet, especially the people that God has placed in our daily lives, whom we see every single day and whom we sometimes don’t appreciate as much as we should?

Both the Eucharist and the priesthood “were born” during the Last Supper. Today we thank Jesus for giving us the Eucharist and the priesthood during the Last Supper. As Pope John Paul II wrote, “Before this extraordinary reality we find ourselves amazed and overwhelmed, so deep is the humility by which God ‘stoops’ in order to unite himself with man! If we feel moved before the Christmas crib, when we contemplate the Incarnation of the Word, what must we feel before the altar where, by the poor hands of the priest, Christ makes his Sacrifice present in time? We can only fall to our knees and silently adore this supreme mystery of faith” (Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday 2004 §2).