April 4, 1996
Ex 12: 1-8, 11-14Collect
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
I've posted a Holy Thursday homily almost every year since 2009. Here's an older one.
“Seeing the blood, I will pass over you” (Ex 12: 13).
Is there any story in the Old Testament more dramatic than the exodus? Israel was saved by the blood of the paschal lamb and by their passage through the waters of the sea. The liturgy of the Easter triduum shows that Israel’s redemption is a paradigm for our own. We are saved by the blood of the Lamb and by our passage through the waters of Baptism.
Every Easter season Johnny Hart goes poetic in his comic strip B.C. in tribute to our redemption. Last Sunday his peg-legged poet scribbled, in part:
His heart has been pierced
that yours may beat,
And the blood of his corpse
washes your feet.
Picture yourself
in raiment white
Cleansed by the blood
of the lifeless knight.
It’s not great poetry, but it expresses our faith: faith that the blood of Christ cleanses our sins and causes God’s wrath to pass over us; and more, that blood marks us as belonging to Christ.
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| (by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret) |
Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup we do more than proclaim the death of the Lord, just as our Jewish brothers and sisters, by eating the Seder, do more than commemorate the exodus. We enter the saving mysteries, we become active partakers. God marks us even now with the blood of the Lamb, marks us as his own, passes over us, and saves us.
Christ “commanded us to celebrate [this supper] as the new and eternal sacrifice” (Collect). The new and eternal sacrifice is his own body and blood, a sacrifice which he consummated on the altar of the cross. But our bread and wine sacramentally, mysteriously, by divine power and divine love, become his own body and blood and so become that same “new and eternal sacrifice,” the body given for us, the blood spilled for us. Our bread and wine become a sign of the new and eternal covenant.
St. John begins his account of the Last Supper by reminding us that Jesus loved his own to the end (John 13:1). The opening prayer of our liturgy echoes this when it recalls “the supper which your Son left to his Church to reveal his love.” It reveals his love because it is that same body that was nailed to the cross, the same blood that flowed from his scourged back, thorned head, and pierced limbs. This body and blood which he gave for us on Calvary he gave in sign beforehand in the upper room, and he gives it tonight upon this altar, at this table, once again revealing his love in the one eternal sacrifice.
This supper that Christ leaves to his Church reveals God’s love for us when we find in it—quoting again from the opening prayer—“the fullness of life and love.” The full life and love of Christ ought to be the energy that flows from eating this food. And this divine energy of life and love compels us—“the love of Christ impels us,” to cite Paul once more (2 Cor 5:14)—to be life-givers and love-bearers to our neighbors.
We commune with the body and blood of Christ; we become one with him. Jesus “loved his own in this world, and would show his love for them to the end” (John 13:1). The example which he has given us, we must follow: “As I have done, so you must do” (John 13:15). This supper will continue to reveal God’s love for the Church to the Church, and to all mankind, to the extent that you and I who eat this supper, who commune with him, in deed and thought and attitude become one with him and make God’s love evident and personal.
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