Homily for Maundy Thursday

Homily delivered by Fr Dominic Robinson SJ

You might have wondered what has happened to the Andrew White Last Supper?  It’s not been stolen.  It’s gone to St Anthony’s Forest Gate and will be returning to us for another showing at some point.  Many will miss it – I certainly will.  Fans of St Aloysius, me included, will be delighted we can venerate him properly again and give him pride of place interceding for young people.  Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder.  And I’m appreciating the painting much more, perhaps especially in preparing for the sacred triduum.  It is an unusual contemporary representation of the Last Supper, the Thursday evening gathering in the Upper Room in Jerusalem before Jesus’ crucifixion and death on the first Good Friday.  Many visitors have stopped in front of the painting and spend time contemplating it.  I often wonder what it is they see.  For me it is an extraordinary inspired work of art as the apostles gathered around the table are so vividly recognisable, not as they might have been in Jesus’ time, but resemble people I’ve met.  And visitors often say they too see familiar faces there.  I’ve heard people say “that’s me around the table” or “that’s my friend there with Jesus”.  Andrew White himself said: “Most of the models who sat for the painting were unknown to me the year I began the work. But as the hours and months passed and friendships grew, the painting became less about the disciples of 2000 years ago and more about Christ among His disciples today”. 

        For me ‘In Memoriam’ symbolises how the Lord wants to invite us, scattered as we are across diverse communities, nationalities, ages, backgrounds around the altar of sacrifice. That’s what we do every time we celebrate the Mass.  Gathering the scatteredfrom the margins around the table where we get to the very heart of what our faith is about.  That’s what the eucharist, what the sacrifice of the Mass is about.  And this evening we embrace the eternal power of this moment in history, on the first Maundy Thursday, when Christ finally showed the full depth of his love for all his people.  As he looks into the cup of his blood he says yes to his Father’s will that he die for us, his scattered flock, so we might all have eternal life.

But there is much more to this.  If we feel comforted and think we can leave it at that we need to be encouraged to look more deeply into the scriptures and the power of this moment we re-enact this evening as we embark on this sacred triduum of prayer, a triduum of prayer which calls us to put our faith into action.  So when we awake from the tomb of Holy Saturday we are attuned to hear the voice and receive the embrace of the Christ who stoops to mingle himself with our flesh and blood in the depths of the despair of our underworld and our personal and societal purgatories and hells. 

When we gather around the table at Mass we do not simply as individuals.  Christ’s command to “do this” in memory of him is a command, a mandate to be a mature disciple.  So when we gather around the altar we are also called, as were the first apostles, as part of Christ’s Body the Church with the mandate to bring others closer to Christ.  To gather in those who are not here.  To go to the peripheries to bring them to the table at which the blood shed for us is the lifeblood of a world groaning for freedom from what holds us back.  Every time we come to Mass we hear the words “do this in memory of me”.  And every time we participate in this eucharist we not just remember the last supper but, through our adoration of the eucharist as the central mystery of our faith, we are strengthened to act out the Lord’s command. Through the very body of Christ broken for us in sacrifice, through the very blood of Christ poured out of love for us, we believe we are truly strengthened to carry out his missionary command.  

And this is expressed powerfully in the command, the mandate to wash one another’s feet.  To forget what it is we consider important or skilled or privileged about us, be it class or education or family or money or loyalty to the faith and the Church.  Even our own comfort, our own peace of mind, our own happiness.  To say no to what we need to to empty ourselves of that and to say yes to the God who on Holy Saturday on the darkest of nights will show what spilling blood out of the world means and take us by the hand to bring us out of our depths to be true disciples.  This washing of the feet is scandalous to the world.  It will cost reputation, livelihood, it will change who we are, how we fit into society, how we are Church in a troubled world.  It will affect whom we associate with, how we are viewed, what jobs we are considered for, and in the case of some modern day prophets will cost their lives.   

        And it is a mandate no less.  It also includes our call to work for reconciliation between Christians of other churches and ecclesial communities, to do all we can as a truly Catholic community to show how Christians are united as a vital force in our society.  The call to be one Body is the ardent desire of the Lord.  It is in St John’s Gospel that we hear this call expressed so clearly as he prays alone to his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane after that last supper with his first apostles: “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one: even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may believe that thou hast sent me.  The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me” (John 17: 20-23).  Pope Francis speaks of how the Eucharist calls us to be disciples of unity: “The Eucharist also reminds us that we are not isolated individuals, but one body.  As the people in the desert gathered the manna that fell from heaven and shared it in their families (cf. Ex 16), so Jesus, the Bread come down from Heaven, calls us together to receive him and to share him with one another.  The Eucharist is not a sacrament “for me”; it is the sacrament of the many, who form one body, God’s holy and faithful people.  Saint Paul reminded us of this: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17).  The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity.  We come around this one table of the Lord. Whoever receives it cannot fail to be a builder of unity, because building unity has become part of his or her “spiritual DNA”.  May this Bread of unity heal our ambition to lord it over others, to greedily hoard things for ourselves, to foment discord and criticism.  May it awaken in us the joy of living in love, without rivalry, jealousy or mean-spirited gossip”.

 This is the central mystery of our faith.  The faith that knows the power of his sacrificial love for us in his dying, in his going to the tomb with us, in his rising again on Easter morning.  At the very heart of the great Eucharistic Prayer the priest proclaims on our behalf every time he stands at the altar of sacrifice we all proclaim together this mystery of faith.  “We proclaim your death O Lord, and profess your resurrection, until you come again”.  The silent prayer of the priest at the offertory sums up the awesome meaning of the mystery we are preparing to embrace once more: “by the mystery of this water and wine may we share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”.    God’s love in Christ wants to fulfil all our longing for meaning in our lives and so calls each one of us out of ourselves to be servants of his love for all. 

  And so the eucharist is far from a private devotion.  Make no mistake.  When we are called to transcend ourselves.  That’s why we encourage, before receiving Holy Communion, to exchange a sign of peace, why we give audible responses, why we encourage active participation.  For what we do in the Mass prepares us for what the Mass is all about: ‘Go in peace, glorifying the Lord with our lives’.  Being Christ to the world.  It expresses our Christian vocation to love as Christ loved.  Each time we approach the altar to receive Holy Communion we say yes to this and so say yes to our Christian calling.  The drama of the Mass teaches us that the eucharist is never a private matter because it embraces our togetherness, our communion as Church, and so our united witness in the world.  Each time we say “amen” to his body and his blood we are reminded of our common duty to serve Him. And this evening, now COVID restrictions lift, we invite you also, as a symbol of what it is all about, to also receive from the chalice the precious blood of Christ – it is an invitation, as many may feel uncomfortable still for hygenic reasons, but it is an invitation we take seriously because it expresses who we are.   Sent to proclaim our faith in his blood shed for us on the cross, to bear him to the world as servants of his mission, wherever that is, and to bring those on the margins especially into our centre to receive the compassion of Christ we have known. 

Our Catholic faith centred on the Mass we celebrate each day is truly such a wonderful gift to us. It changes our lives for good.  Following Christ’s command to do this in memory of him we are reminded that our Faith is not based on our own efforts, however great and courageous and commendable they are.  Rather, our faith is located deep in the power of the eucharistic sacrifice itself, deep in the mystery of the person of Christ who wants to touch us with his love, to lead us forth as pilgrims on a journey, to be drawn into the mystery of his sacrifice for us, which gives ultimate meaning to our lives of Christian service and finds its final resting place at the eternal banquet in a heavenly destiny, a purpose even beyond this world.