Ex.12:1-4(5-10)
11-14
Ps.116:1,10-17
I Cor.ll:23-26
John 13:1-11,31b-35

MAUNDY THURSDAY
HE 7:30pm w/Maundy & strip altar

EAT, DRINK, AND BE HOLY

Credit: USCatholic 3/91 pp.22-3 (John Shea)
Previous: 1991

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Two things happen on this night: the Last Supper, and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Let us think on each one in turn.

The Last Supper: Jesus is seated at the table with His Apostles. He tells them of His great desire to eat this meal with them. He takes bread, breaks it and gives it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you." He passes the cup, saying, "This cup, poured out for you, is the New Covenant in my blood."

This is anything but a last supper. Christians say these words and do these gestures down to this day. What is supposed to happen in the minds and hearts of those who participate?

Eating is an intimate act. We take something from the outside world and put it inside, where it nourishes and sustains us. We transform food into personal energy. This drives home the point that we are not isolated individuals. We live in a life-giving relationship with the earth and all its inhabitants. From the moment you put a piece of bread into your mouth, you are part of the world. Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with the person who made the bread (per Thomas Merton). We are least separate and most in communion when we eat and drink.

When Jesus identifies Himself with the broken bread and the poured-out wine, He is saying: that there will be no distance between His friends and Himself. His life is going to enter into them and nourish and sustain them: "I will put my law within them; I will write it on their hearts," as Jeremiah put it (31:33). The heart is the inmost center of the person, and the way into that center is through eating and drinking. In this way the Spirit of God in Christ, comes to live within us.

This primordial gesture of eating and drinking Christ, has great significance for the Christian way of life. We Christians do not obey a law that is outside of us, or bow to a God Who is beyond us. We gradually grow into Christ by taking His life inside us and allowing it to nourish us and transform us. In this way we become Christ; we act out of an inner center of solidarity with Him. The Old Covenant was written on stone; the new Covenant is written on the heart.

"We put on the mind of Christ not by any loss of our mental power, nor as a mind supplemental to ours, nor by having His mind essentially and personally passing over into our mind. None of these. We put on the mind of Christ by its illuminating the power of our mind with its own quality, and bringing the same energy to it." (Maximus the Confessor, 7th century).

In every action of eating and drinking Christ, His power enters in and transforms our own power.

Gethsemane: After supper, Jesus and the disciples went out to the Garden of Gethsemane.

In the Gospel of Luke, the portrait of Jesus in Gethsemane is modeled after an athlete preparing for a contest. The angel is His trainer, and the sweat of blood symbolizes the intensity of Jesus's preparation for the ordeal that is coming. The test will be whether Jesus can stay faithful to the God of love in these most trying circumstances. Can He remain steadfast in love, in the face of violence?

To find the power to do this, He resorts to prayer. He knows that on His own He cannot endure the trial. He has just heard Peter's boast that he would never deny Jesus and Jesus knows that that boast will not last even between the first and second crowing of the cock.

His power must come from coinciding His will with God's will. This is His prayer, and it is important to note that Jesus rises from prayer. He has found the power to undergo and win the contest.

In the life of Christians, what prayer looks like depends on the circumstances.

Sometimes it is a refuge for helplessness, or an angry question, or a platform for demands, or a sigh of relief, or a quiet thank-you.

Christ in Gethsemane shows us prayer as a centering activity, to get ready for action. We do not merely react to the events of life. Rather, we lean into them and put leverage on them, to push them towards better outcomes.

Prayer puts us into a solid yet flexible place to deal with the contests of life. It is the exact opposite of falling asleep. It is staying awake, refusing escape, hungering for the deepest reality under the surface turmoil.

Prayer strives to penetrate what to some eyes must be baffling and repellent, too hard to understand, too cruel to endure, too meaningless to use: prayer strives to engage, and penetrate in order to discern the lines of what is being shaped, in order to engage the one who prays with what is happening.

Whenever we find ourselves in Gethsemane - and at one time or another all of us will - we will need this kind of prayer.

So on this night we meet two fundamental things about Christian life.

The basic act of eating and drinking is the means by which we put on the mind of Christ.

The basic act of prayer is centering on God, in order to engage with all of life and what God is doing in it.

We will have plenty of reason to need and to use these fundamentals in our Christian life.