After this Mass of the Last Supper is over, after the bread and wine are cleared from the table, we, the disciples of Christ, will be asked…invited...to stay on, linger awhile, after this very special dinner with our Lord. He will be asking us to stay a moment…to watch with Him for just a bit...because He is so distressed. He does not want to leave us, but His heart is telling Him He must answer the Father’s call. And He is sad...and He is frightened...and He is asking us, His friends...His people...His faithful... to stay with Him.
And we, in the safety and security of this beautiful church, will wonder how the Lord’s original apostles, His devoted disciples, could have abandoned Him in His passion, abandoned Him in His need there in the Garden of Gethsemane. We will wonder how they could fall asleep to leave Jesus alone in His agony. Not one of them would be there to wipe the Lord’s tears and sweat of blood. Not one of them there to steady His tormented body to embrace Him with love and support.
So we will wait with Him in altar of repose tonight. We will watch with Him awhile. Then we will leave, renewed in faith, spirit and a desire to serve Him and to serve our brothers and our sisters. And we will promise to do penance for our past faults. We will resolve to reform our still imperfect selves. Our hearts, swelling with love and adoration, we will wonder how the eleven could have possibly slept thru the Lord’s agony in the garden and how the 12th could have betrayed Him so.
But before long, maybe not this evening, but before long, our human frailty will resurface, and we will forget the promises we made never to leave Him again and we too will betray Him with our weaknesses and trespasses. We too will weep with regret and shame in our own Garden of Gethsemane. But Jesus will forgive us again and again. And we will thank God that He sent His only beloved son to save us from ourselves again and again.
And perhaps we will remember the lesson Jesus taught us at His Last Supper. Jesus not only gave Himself to us in the Holy Eucharist, but He showed us how to receive Him. He showed us how to find Him right here and now on earth. Though He was the guest of honor at that Last Supper, and Lord of the Universe, Jesus got down on His knees, and despite the protests by the apostles, He lovingly, tenderly anointed the feet of each apostle, one by one. And then He asked them: “Do you understand what I just did for you? I who am Teacher and Lord? What I just did was to give you an example; as I have done, so you must do.”
And so must we, my people, follow the Lord’s example to anoint the lowly, the poor and the needy. We must kneel to wash their feet, and when we do so, we will be anointing the feet of Christ. Where do we find them? Don’t worry…they will find us. We need only open our eyes and hearts to them.
In the culture of the day, of course, this was one of the duties of a household servant or a slave. And for Saint John, the community that gathers for the Eucharist must be a community that assumes servant's duties towards each other as a basic facet of it's Christian faith and spirituality, and as a basic facet of it's practical Imitation of Christ.
The Eucharist uncovers something fundamental about the purpose of our lives and our relationships, as human beings and as God's creatures. It tells us, in Saint Paul's language, that we're all members one of another. God never intended us or made us to live for ourselves, competing against each other and engaged in little - or not so little - contests of mutual exploitation and manipulation. That's part of the essence of sin, our fallen-ness: the spirit of self-assertion and egotism that alienates us from each other.
We seem to live in a society which is increasingly fragmented, where the commitment to mutual service put forward by Christ in tonight's gospel is increasingly absent. The strongest influences in our modern culture are all the other way, encouraging egotism and self-assertion, and so fostering division rather than communion.
In these circumstances, as the circle of Jesus' present-day disciples we've always got to be looking for ways of appealing to people to embrace the "better way" of the gospel and calling them into the spirit of communion and service that lies at the heart of the gospel and, as Saint John shows, is linked so closely to our central act of worship, the Mass.
So as I say, right now, more than ever, we need to find ways of announcing the Good News of salvation through Christ.
But in looking for ways of manifesting the Christian faith in an environment that is indifferent and in many ways even hostile, there's one temptation which I think we should try hard to avoid.
If, as Christ is telling us tonight, we must always strive to foster the bonds of love and service among ourselves, as well as offering worship to God, then I think we also have to avoid fostering a spirit of purely human fellowship divorced from worship of God.
The ideal symbolised by the washing of the disciples feet is a fellowship of mutual service, not of mutual admiration. Jesus didn't carry out his mission on earth, and go through his passion and death, to teach us the value of having a cup of tea and a friendly chat.
If the inner life of the Church gets no further than that, if "community spirit" becomes an end in itself, divorced from basic elements of Christian spiritual life such as belief in Jesus as Saviour, constant conversion, prayer, communion with God, then its a very impoverished and hollowed-out version of the gospel we're advocating - and a caricature of the Eucharist. And yet its not uncommon now for people to appear surprised when they discover that belonging to the Church involves identifying with Christ and putting his commandments into practice, rather than having their own emotional needs supplied by others.
Several years ago, I spent a month going around Europe. Some priests would tell me stories to maintain high alert and execute extreme caution as some areas are dangerous and a literal den of thieves.
On my way to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, someone tapped my shoulder from behind. Adrenalin already rushing, I turned to face a terrible sigh a very unfortunate and unsightly man whose face was covered with running sore boils of sort. Thoughts of leprosy and thievery rushed through my brain. I’m not even sure what he wanted. Money I suppose, help perhaps. But my instinct told me to distance myself from this poor man and that I did as quickly as possible.
Once inside the Cathedral, I felt a rush of shame. This poor man had been asking for my help. And here I was, a priest, a servant of the Lord, running from him. I turned around and headed back. I don’t know how long I searched for that soul, but I never found him and I never forgot him. I think I understood then how the original disciples deserted Christ. It was Fear. Fear for self. Fear of involvement. Fear blurs His holy face. We desert Christ. We betray the Messiah, whenever we fail to see His face in the poor and suffering.
For years I’ve thought for that man with the terrible boils in Paris. He was my own personal Leper, dwelling in some cave of my very soul. Had I failed to recognize my master, Jesus Christ? Perhaps. But God is good. At some point, when we least expect it, Christ appears again. Maybe not with boils, but with a drinking problem. Maybe not as a leper, but with an addled mind. And suddenly he is tapping you on the shoulder asking for a dollar or a dime.
Back in Rome, I went to do so volunteer work at the House of the Poor run by the sister of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. A homeless man, one of the regulars, approached me one day, worn and dirty, obviously no stranger to the street. He wants to have a photograph taken with me. I agreed and as I pose with him for the camera, he looks into my eyes and asks: “Will you please put your arm around me”. On my way back to my Rome residence, I could sense that people could smell the foul odor that the poor man left on my clothing but for me, that was the most fragrant perfumes I ever wore. I believe I was the happier one rather than the poor man.
My friends, we recognize the face of Christ, and He is saying: “…as often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me.” And you will have washed the feet of Christ.
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