One way to see the great significance of what we are celebrating
now in this liturgy is to contemplate it as the last wishes of Jesus who was
about to face his death. On the night before he died, he left his disciples with
farewell words. Farewell words and gestures. On this night he revealed to them
what matters to him. The desires of his heart.
On the same night he was betrayed, Scripture says, Jesus took
bread and cup, gave them to his disciples as his body and blood. He said to
them, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The Last Supper, the eucharist, is
important for our Lord. He wants all of us to gather in this meal; and in this
celebration, to remember him.
Notice that there is a significant parallelism between this and
the account of the first reading on the jewish Passover meal. In the Jewish
Passover meal, a lamb is slain. The lamb’s blood is smeared on the doorpost of
the houses of the people of God to save them from death. The lamb’s flesh became
their food that night. And the people of God were to commemorate this meal year
after year… so that they would not forget… so that they will always remember
for ages to come that Yahweh their God loves them and have saved them.
On the night before Jesus died, he offered himself as the Lamb of
God. His body and blood was to be the supreme sacrifice so that death, the ultimate
result of our sins, will never, ever, touch us his beloved.
My dear friends, whenever we gather to celebrate the eucharist
just as we do now, the Lord is inviting us to remember the essential truth that
God loves us dearly and continues to save us from the clutches of our sins. “Do
this in remembrance of me.” Jesus says to us. Perhaps in a very personal way,
he is saying to you and me just before he dies, “I want you to know and to
always remember…always… how much I love you.”
Another desire of our Lord could have not been communicated more
clearly. By the washing of the feet, He shows his ardent desire that just as he
loves us so much, we also have to love one another by serving and caring for
one another.
While they were at supper, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.
Peter was kind of uneasy with Jesus’ gesture. Yes, he was uneasy because
washing feet is a lowly task of a servant. Jesus is his Master. How could he
let him stoop down and wash his dirty feet! It was indeed an awkward scenario
for the disciples. But Jesus did not feel awkward doing this. Why? Because he
had been doing that all his life. All through out his ministry, he had shown
his deep concern and love for the people. He was always with the poor, the
sinners, the outcast, the oppressed. He served them with compassion. He was
always in the business of washing feet. No. Not the well-pedicured… but the
dirty feet.
So that just before he died, he made sure that his disciples would
see this with clarity. After washing their feet, he addressed them saying, “I
have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should
also do.”
To love is to serve. This evening, the Lord wants us to remember
that.
My dear friends, as we continue this celebration, I invite you to
approach this event with a contemplative heart. A heart that sees in the
rituals and symbolic gestures the presence of our Lord. When we continue with
the act of washing the feet, let Jesus, who is about to die, be present in our
hearts and let us feel and experience his intensity, his urgent desire to tell
us about what is important. Love, in its most active mode, is serving one
another. This is essential.
When we break bread and drink from the cup, let us experience once
again, that same self-sacrifice he did at last supper. Let us remember him, the
Lord… him who loves us dearly so as to lay down everything. This is his request
before he died… “Do this in remembrance of me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment