Maundy Thursday, 2010

 On Palm Sunday, the long Gospel we heard began with the account of the Last Supper. Tonight we begin the Paschal Triduum with this Mass of the Lord’s Supper.
 Jesus’ Last Supper coincided, we know, with the celebration of the Passover. And the Jewish Passover, we know, is the annual memorial of the Exodus. More than that, the first celebration of the Passover - mandated through Moses and Aaron - was the beginning of the Exodus. “You shall eat it like this: with a girdle round your waist, sandals on your feet, a staff in your hand” - ready, in other words, to move off, the ignition on, the engine ticking, as it were. It was no mean journey they were embarking on. It was difficult, tortuous, long. And at its beginning comes the sacrifice of the lamb, the daubing of doorposts and lintels with its blood, the roasting and eating of its flesh. Fortified by this, the motley crew of Hebrew slaves and their hangers-on set off. And in a certain sense, not physical, but not just fanciful either, the Israelites will make their whole 40 year journey through the desert protected and sustained by that Passover Lamb.
 Tonight Jesus, the Lamb of God, begins his Exodus. “It was before the festival of the Passover, writes John, and Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to pass from this world to the Father.” The allusions are obvious. Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension are an Exodus. And it too begins with a sacrifice and a Lamb. “This bread is my Body, this cup is my Blood.”
 So the question is, what is the Exodus? After all, it’s not a merely historical matter. The Exodus released onto the public human stage one of the most extraordinary people we know. And their 20th c. reprise of it is a major cause of current geopolitical instability. The Exodus was and is one of the great events of human history, and of the history of God’s dealings with humanity. It was real and it was symbolic. It provides a kind of pattern or template of what, in the Judaeo-Christian perspective, life is really about; of what God’s will is for us. So, what is it? As one of the brethren preaching during Lent put it, the Exodus was a passage from being things, objects, property, entries in Egyptian ledgers to becoming persons, subjects, agents, free. It was, too, like a revival of lost childhood memories, of the far-off promise of a Land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a revival of memory that gave the Israelites a future, not just endlessly more of the dispiriting now (baking bricks for a hostile State). It was as if their lives were no longer a broken story, but suddenly became a coherent whole again with a plot and a goal. No wonder they burst into song as the water washed back on Pharaoh and his chariots. They were no longer defined by their place in an alien society; they were themselves. But for what? Freedom can be its own wilderness. But after the Red Sea comes Mount Sinai, comes a meeting with God. Suddenly he was there  - I am who am - calling them his people, making a covenant with them, instructing them how to live in harmony with one another and with him. And here is the heart of it. The Exodus was a passage from oppression to autonomy. But that autonomy was not an end in itself; that freedom from (the Egyptians dead on the sea-shore) was a freedom for (You shall be my people and I shall be your God). Only then, only in a covenant, was it really, truly freedom. The Exodus led to a free self-giving to a God who was freely giving himself. The Exodus was the Lord’s leading-out. It was an education to love, true love, love in truth, the sacrificial love on which union and unity are built. It was induction into relationship.
 And at the beginning comes the Passover and the Lamb. Protected by the blood of that Lamb and sustained by its flesh the people made their Exodus. In Christian terms, this isn’t fanciful. The sacred rituals of the Old Testament, circumcision and so on, and the Passover most of all, really did convey the protection and sustenance of grace. They did so as prophetic symbols of One to come, the Lamb of God himself. The Lamb that secretly strengthened them was the one who, tonight, goes forth to fulfil the Exodus.
 And this is what the Triduum we’re embarking on is. This is, in fact, the real, final Exodus. It is the completion of the original one. It is its opening out to the whole of humanity. Jesus is giving the Exodus its final depth and breadth. Breadth because opening it to all, not just one people. Depth because freeing us from what most deeply enslaves us: the self-closure of sin, and its consequence, death. He gives himself to the Father for us, and enables us to give ourselves after him, and so become free. He gives us the goal of eternal life and the resurrection of the body, the loss of none of the good things we know from this life and the addition of what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, a joy beyond our imagining.
 And so tonight, and in this Triduum, we too set off again. We volunteer for the transformations, the passages, of the Exodus. We want to die to what will die in us anyway, our worldly desires, and rise to a better, more meaningful life. And here the ancient pattern is replayed. Here, at the beginning, what was given Israel simply in sketch is given us in sacramental reality. How after all can we follow Christ in his Exodus without faltering? In Israel’s Exodus only a handful of those who left Egypt made it to the Promised Land; it was another generation that entered. And how easily our desire to make a gift of ourselves is unhorsed, sometimes by the most trifling contrarieties! Therefore tonight, simply, brilliantly, Jesus gives us himself. He institutes the Supper of the Lamb. He gives us, through the apostles, through their priesthood, the Holy Eucharist: a Sacrifice-sacrament, a Communion-sacrament, a Presence-sacrament. Here is the slain Lamb himself, in his exodus. Here is His Flesh and Blood. Here is his whole self, food and drink for each of us. To wrest us from the Egypts of our hearts and set us towards the Father. To give us that secret strength we need not to falter on our Exodus. Can it be true? I quote: “The mind baulks; the response is often bewilderment. It is not possible that God should be ‘mine’, as if he ceased to be immense and purely unreachable...Yet he is indeed mine, for, as creator and sustainer, he enters into my being far more profoundly than I can enter into my own thoughts or volitions; he is more within and more ‘mine’, than my own thinking and willing, my own actions and sufferings. And that is not all; he delivers himself to death for me, hands over his very life to me, plants within me the seed of everlasting life: his true flesh, his inebriating blood, his [glorified] humanity... No wonder we are bewildered. We are torn apart by a love that defies our logic, that multiplies our longings and frustrates our desires, which are always too few and too small. God would have it this way, for unless he rends us and remakes us, we cannot enter into his rest, be one with him, be the temple of his glory, bear him in our bodies, become his sons in our souls” (from Peter A. Kwasniewski, St. Thomas Aquinas on Eucharistic Ecstasy) - or, I would add, exodus with him, be free, be educated into love, true love, the love that worships and cares and serves, and gives birth to union, unity.
 This is the wonder of tonight. Jesus goes out to tonight on his Exodus, and through the gift of the Eucharist takes every generation with him. And wherever the Eucharist is - this has been proved again and again where dictatorships hold sway - there human dignity becomes possible again, there freedom can be breathed, and love overcome hate.
 Everything comes from the Father, everything leads to Him. Tonight, in the Upper Room, Jesus opens the way to the Father. “This is my Body...this is the cup of my Blood.” Stronger than our weakness.
And when we are dying, our final Exodus, may they be our viaticum!

  Fr. Hugh, O. S. B.