Exodus 12:1-8.11-14 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15
The Eucharist is the truth about love. There exists in our society a wide-spread agreement that love is the most important, or at least one of the most important things in life. Many of our guests and visitors here at the abbey have no explicit religious faith; some would call themselves “seekers”; and most would say things like: “love is all that matters” or, as the famous song has it, “all you need is love”, implying also that you don't need “religion” to tell you this. But what is actually meant by love? Sometimes people go a step further and say: “Just as you monks, I also believe in a loving god”, with silent questions hovering in the background: “what do I need Christianity for?” or “why go to Church?” But is this a real faith in the living God, or is it rather imagining oneself as being naturally lovable? It may uncharitable of me, but I almost always suspect it is the latter, and think it not only a touch self-absorbed but, dare I say it, frankly false. And that not because there's something particularly wrong with the person I'm talking to. As Bishop Hugh used to say, “most of us do not spontaneously inspire love in others”: it's just a fact of life. What do you mean when you say that this god of yours is loving, except that there exists a being which affirms and admires you all the time? But does it actually exist, this being, or is it just a projection of your unfulfilled desire? “All you need is love”, true, but love must be something real, and not an empty concept ready to be filled with whatever meaning suits me at any given time.
The Eucharist is the truth about love. I've taken this sentence from Pope Benedict XVI. To be precise, the Eucharist is “the truth about the love which is the very essence of God,” he wrote. We come to Mass to learn about love then, to “taste and see” what life is all about, to know the principle behind creation, the key to all understanding. We have to come repeatedly, because the fallen world and our wayward hearts constantly offer rival explanations and theories. Often internally coherent and superficially appealing, they are in fact just mental constructs floating in the air, with no foothold in reality, in God. What we have in the Eucharist, on the other hand, is not abstract, academic truth, to be read about in a book – though that can be helpful from time to time. The Mass is not a lecture to attend, or experimental theatre to watch and participate in. It's something infinitely greater; and that's because the Paschal Mystery is the truth of the Eucharist.
“When Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Our Lord loved us to the end. That is, he granted the first lot of us the privilege of participating in his final departure. “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer”, he said. And so this Last Supper became part of “his hour” and with it every validly celebrated Mass throughout the ages. Our Lord created an overlap, as it were. He both dragged us into the Paschal Mystery, and put himself into all our future Eucharistic celebrations. “He took bread, broke it and said: ‘This is my body, which is for you. He took the cup saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.’”
So the Paschal Mystery is the truth of the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is the truth about love, the truth about God. To complete his teaching, Jesus “rose from supper, laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it round his waist; then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet”. What is this in turn? An example of love in action, of how to spend God's grace contained in the sacrament? Yes, and much more than that. It's “a healing remedy” that actively counters our fallen tendency to selfishness; our tendency to fall for illusions. It's a demonstration of the power of grace, the power to turn and start walking in the opposite direction, and it's revealing to us the mind of Christ Jesus.
“Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus”, wrote St Paul.
“This is for the hearing of the wicked and runaway slave, man I mean, who refused to serve and tried to appropriate equality with his Lord”, commented Bl. Guerric of Igny. And he went on: “Christ was by nature God. He nevertheless dispossessed himself and not only took the nature of a slave, but also carried out the ministry of a slave, accepting an obedience of the Father which brought him death. But reckoning it as too little for him, he also served his own slave as more than a slave. Man was made to serve his creator. And what could be more just than that you should serve him by whom you were created, without whom you cannot exist? To serve him is to reign. ‘I will not serve’, man says to his Creator. ‘Then I will serve you’, his Creator says to man. ‘You sit down, I will minister, I will wash your feet. You rest; I will bear your weariness, your infirmities.’”
Brothers and sisters, Our Lord went way beyond just showing us how man ought to be in relationship with his Creator. Through the Eucharist, he let us participate in his own life, opened his own mind to us. God is love, and the Eucharist is the truth about love, with Christ Jesus the Priest of love. Now that we know what love means, now that we have tasted and seen, we are ready for our mission, ready to become Priests ourselves:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”