Thursday, April 9th, 2020
Traditio. This word echoes through all the others tonight. Traditio. It means “to hand over”. Its in the first reading: This month is to be the first of all the others for you...For all generations you are to declare it a day of festival, for ever. In the psalm God hands over his goodness: How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me? In the second reading St Paul hands over what he handed by the Lord: This is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you. In the gradual Jesus hands over a new commandment: I give you a new commandment.
The point of this is to highlight that Jesus is handing over something to us in the Gospel. The first thing he hands over to our care is the new commandment. This is where we get the name Maundy Thursday from. Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum: commandment. You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.’ What about the “I give you a new commandment” line? Here, that commandment is given and interpreted. The washing of the feet indicate the kind of love Jesus is talking about. Not just feelings or romance or idealism, but actions, whether we like it or not, in service of the other’s good. That is love. That is Divine love.
There is also something else Jesus gives us tonight. He gives us priests. Catholic priests. As the Council of Trent clarified: If anyone shall say that by the words ‘Do this in commemoration of me’ Christ did not institute the apostles priests, or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer his body and blood: let him be anathema (Council of Trent, session 22, ch. 1). The whole Catholic hierarchy in fact - Bishops, priests, and deacons - Jesus ordains and sets in the structure of the Church. Since the beginning, the ordained ministry has been conferred and exercised in three degrees (CCC 1593), as the catechism reminds us.
There is still one more thing Jesus hands over to us. It is himself. We know this - because it is at the very heart of the words we prayed at the beginning of mass in the Collect: morti se traditúrus - when about to hand himself over to death.
My friends, this is why tonight is special. Tonight, for the first time, the bridegroom gives himself to us, his bride. Tonight the very origin of our being hands himself, totally, into our care and lives forever. Never again, now, need we be separated from God. In every parish church, locked and dark as they may be, Jesus is still there now, with us, locked up too - in lockdown permanently.
Three ways we can honour the Real Presence in the time of lockdown:
- Make a sign of the cross each time you drive or walk past a church.
- Your daily exercise can include a walk or run past the church.
- Like St John Vianney, imaginatively place yourself before the tabernacle.
Let us pray: O God, who have called us to participate in this most sacred Supper, in which your Only Begotten Son, when about to hand himself over to death, entrusted to the Church a sacrifice new for all eternity, the banquet of his love, grant, we pray, that we may draw from so great a mystery, the fullness of charity and of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son..
