Holy Thursday – Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 116:12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15
Two weeks ago today, Pope Francis, on his first full day as Bishop of Rome,
visited the Basilica of St. Mary Major.
While he was there, he prayed at the Nativity Crypt,
a small chapel that holds what is believed to be a relic of the manger
in which the newborn Jesus was placed.
The pope was not the first Jesuit to journey to this spot.
No, the first Jesuit to do this was, well, the very first Jesuit,
St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus
and the patron of our parish.
He actually was not even a Jesuit yet when he made the trip!
On Christmas Eve in 1538, nearly two years before the Society was officially founded,
Ignatius, even though he had already been a priest for eighteen months,
said mass for the first time,
and he chose to do it in that very crypt.
One of his biographers tells us,
“[Ignatius’s] eyes were so filled with tears that he could hardly read the missal.”
Why did the tears come? Why did they come in such abundance?
Did they issue from Ignatius’s shock that he had become a priest,
a dream that for so long was too bold even for that bold dreamer?
Did he, with the eyes of faith, see Christ,
where others saw just a piece of bread and a few drops of wine?
Did that cascade of tears arise from Ignatius’s realization
that the Latin words he whispered
and the brocaded vestments he wore in that crypt
were but hocus pocus if he himself did not become the Body of Christ,
broken and poured out for those who hunger and thirst?
Tonight, the night where the church re-members the Lord’s Supper,
is the night to ponder such questions of ministry, of the Eucharist, and of service.
It is a night to re-member what happens at mass every day –
our mass here, Ignatius’s in a Roman basilica –
and to see the link between those masses and what happened
when Jesus gathered with his friends the night before he died.
Ignatius’s tears will help us re-member.
Why did the tears come? Why did they come in such abundance?
Robert Cording, a professor of creative writing just up the Mass Pike at Holy Cross,
suggests an answer in his poem, “The Weeper.”
Here are some lines from it:
The Weeper
The name his followers gave Ignatius, who wept
While saying Mass, or while listening to the coos
Of a common dove. Ignatius never knew
When his throat would tighten, a wave of sobs
Breaking him open…
He wept, they say, because he’d suddenly feel
Entirely empty, and utterly grateful, all the doors
Of his heart…swung wide open….
Why did the tears come? Why did they come in such abundance?
Because the doors of Ignatius’s heart were swung wide open,
and our God delights in working with open hearts.
This is one of the messages of the Passover meal described in Exodus,
a story that is more than a set of dining instructions,
and much more than YHWH’s plan
for giving the Egyptians their comeuppance.
Recall, this meal would never have happened
were it not for Pharaoh’s consistently hardened heart (cf., Ex. 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, etc.).
And the Israelites might never have left his “house of slavery” (Deut. 7:8)
were it not for Moses,
whose heart was open to stopping and seeing God’s presence,
when others simply ignored a small, insignificant wildfire;
when others would have remained silent
rather than challenge Pharaoh;
and when others saw a giant sea that no person could ever cross.
Paul gives his account of the Last Supper to the church at Corinth
not to take a leisurely trip down memory lane,
but to combat divisions that had arisen in that community,
divisions grounded in the way the Corinthians
came to the table of the Eucharist.
Paul pries open closed hearts by reminding the church of Corinth,
and, by extension, the church of Chestnut Hill,
that we do not receive the Eucharist for our personal sanctification;
We receive the Eucharist, we receive communion,
to become what we receive,
to become, all of us together, the one Body of Christ.
In the story we just heard from John’s gospel,
we see the contrast between open and closed hearts
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embodied in Jesus and his disciples.
When Peter brashly declares, “You will never wash my feet” (Jn. 13:9),
he makes the same mistake that all of the disciples make over and over again
throughout the gospels:
he tries to domesticate Jesus, to tell him where to go,
what to do, and how to do it.
But limitedness and confinement within set boundaries of etiquette or custom
are among the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ,
who never balked at sharing a meal with so-called sinners,
or demurred from speaking to people whom he should not engage.
It is simply too much for Peter to think of Jesus bending down to wash his feet.
That could not possibly be part of the plan.
Such was the mindset of all the disciples when,
hours later, they fled in terror from the Garden of Gethsemane,
with closed hearts, likely saying,
this could not possibly be part of the plan.
The church calls these days the Sacred Triduum.
What makes them sacred, at least objectively,
is the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ.
And we will commemorate and celebrate all of that here.
But that is not enough.
The triduum becomes sacred, subjectively, for me, for us,
when the doors of our hearts are swung wide open;
when we pause to see God’s presence;
when we forge deeper communion with one another;
when we stop trying to put a leash on Christ.
What does it mean for you to have an open heart these three days?
Re-member, our God delights in working with open hearts.
Thus says Jesus himself; thus says Paul; thus says Moses;
and thus says Ignatius, with his many, many tears.
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