EASTER 2, YEAR C

April 27, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

John 20:19-31

 

The Gospel traditionally appointed for the second Sunday of Easter picks up where last week’s left off. A week ago, on Easter Day, we heard Saint John’s account of the morning of the first day of the week: the discovery of the empty tomb, the Risen Lord’s appearance to Mary Magdalene, and her report to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

 

Today’s Gospel continues on the evening of that very same day, with the disciples hiding behind locked doors in fear. The risen Jesus comes and stands among them, saying, “Peace be with you”. Here John is almost certainly translating the traditional Hebrew greeting Shalom aleichem, “Peace to you.” (To which the traditional response is Aleichem shalom, “And to you, peace!”) In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives this greeting not once but three times: twice during this first appearance to the disciples, and once a week later, when Thomas is present.

This threefold repetition is John’s way of getting our attention and letting us know that something vitally important is being said here. “Peace be with you.” The Lord is not just greeting his disciples with a conventional formula; for he is himself the bearer of the peace that he speaks. Before he appears, the disciples are anxious and afraid. But after he greets them and shows them his hands and his side, they’re glad, they rejoice, at seeing the Lord.

 

The greeting “Peace be with you” quickly passed into Christian usage. Saint Paul begins most of his letters with the formula, “Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” In the liturgy, the celebrant introduces the exchange of greetings known as “the Peace” with the words, “The peace of the Lord be always with you.”

 

The point not to miss is that for us, as for those disciples in the Upper Room, the Risen Christ and no-one else is the true bringer of peace. When we find ourselves in turmoil, beset by anxiety and fear, he comes among us and speaks the words, “Peace be with you.” His words bring about what they say; and his peace enters our hearts.

 

The rest of today’s Gospel expands upon the practical implications of Christ’s peace for our life together. In the first Resurrection appearance, Jesus commissions the disciples to be his apostles: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” (By the way, the word “disciple” means something like student or follower; the word apostle means literally “one who is sent,” or more colloquially an emissary or ambassador. So, in a sense, the disciples are graduating from being Christ’s students to becoming Christ’s representatives in the world.)

 

Then Jesus breathes on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The allusion here is to the creation of Adam in the second chapter of Genesis: “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” The word “Spirit” translates both the Greek pneuma and the Hebrew ruach, both of which mean spirit, breath, or wind. Just as God breathed the breath of life into the first human being, so here the risen Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into his disciples, making them a new creation.

Immediately Jesus makes clear the purpose of this gift: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any they are retained.” Just the Father sent Jesus into the world to forgive and reconcile a fallen world, so Jesus sends his disciples into that same world to extend his forgiveness to all who hear and receive their message.

 

This commission to forgive sins is exercised first of all by ordained priests in pronouncing absolution, and by extension by all Christian people everywhere. The peace of Christ comes first from knowing that we’re forgiven—not perfect but forgiven—and then from forgiving others as Christ has forgiven us. Indeed, we cannot truly have Christ’s peace in our hearts until we’ve forgiven whomever we need to forgive for whatever harm they’ve caused us. Forgiveness is often difficult, but never impossible. For nothing is impossible with God; Christ breathes his Holy Spirit into our hearts precisely so that we may know the peace that comes from forgiving others as we’ve been forgiven.

 

This commissioning describes an outward movement, a sending out. Conversely, the story of “Doubting Thomas” describes an inward movement, an invitation to come in closer: “Put your finger here, and see my hands; put out your hand and place it in my side …” The point I want to emphasize is that for Thomas, the peace of Christ comes precisely from the Lord’s wounds. Thomas himself has said that nothing less will do: “Unless I … place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

 

Having watched Jesus suffer and die on the cross, Thomas knows that a Christ without these wounds would be a false Christ: an impersonator, a sham. So, he insists not just on seeing but on touching the wounds in order to believe.

 

Down through the centuries, spiritual writers have spoken of “the five wounds of the Church.” The Church in this world bears multiple wounds, some of them inflicted by external persecution, oppression, and violence, but many of them self-inflicted (such as the scandal of sexual abuse by the clergy, or the scandal of violence committed in Christ’s Name). The Body of Christ on earth is far from pristine, whole, pure, and perfect. Even now, Christ suffers in the wounded members of his Church. And so, for many people, the greatest challenge to faith, the greatest temptation to unbelief, is the Church’s very imperfection and woundedness.

 

Doubting Thomas shows us another way: that of coming to faith not by avoiding the wounds, nor by pretending they’re not there, nor by averting our eyes from them, but rather by direct engagement: “Put your finger here, and see my hands; put out your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.”

 

Even as he sends us into the world on a mission of reconciliation and forgiveness, Jesus simultaneously invites us to a deeper exploration of our own woundedness as members of a wounded Church. Paradoxically, this exploration engenders a more robust faith: “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God.’” Here is perhaps the ultimate experience of the Lord’s peace: to find our healing and wholeness precisely in and through the wounds of Christ.

EASTER DAY

Sunday 20 April 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

 

Some years ago, at a party given by a couple in my then parish, I had a mildly awkward encounter with one of the other guests. Knowing that I was the rector of an Episcopal parish, this gentleman told me that belonged to a church of another denomination down the street. Then he triumphantly proclaimed: “They’ve made me completely welcome, even though I don’t believe in the Resurrection!” From the way he said it, he was clearly implying that he thought that I wouldn’t make him nearly so welcome at my church.

 

Over the course of my ministry, I’ve occasionally found that people who’ve recently started attending church will finally screw up the courage to ask, reluctantly and after much hesitation, some such question as: “I really like coming here, but to be a member, do I really need to believe in X? Or am I really expected to accept Y?” Often, these questions have to do with miraculous doctrines of the Christian faith such as the Virgin Birth or the bodily Resurrection of Christ.

 

So first, to take the question on its own terms, what are we expected to believe in the Episcopal Church? The classical Anglican answer is summed up in the tag, “the law of prayer is the law of belief.” It means that the best way to learn the Church’s beliefs and teachings is to read the texts we use in worship. We become members of the Church in Holy Baptism. And we continue membership in good standing by regular participation in the Church’s worship, especially the Holy Eucharist.

 

Associated with Baptism and the Eucharist are the two ancient professions of faith known as the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. These are the Church’s definitive summaries of the doctrines and teachings revealed by God in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

 

When we’re baptized, we recite the Apostles Creed, or else it’s recited on our behalf by our parents and godparents in the hope that we’ll eventually make it our own. On Sundays, we recite the Nicene Creed together before receiving Holy Communion. So, the best answer is that to continue as Church members in good standing we’re expected to be able to join in professing the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. And it’s worth noting that both Creeds unambiguously affirm Christ’s Resurrection from the dead.

 

While I’m comfortable with that answer, however, I do find the question a bit odd. What are we required to believe as members of the Church? Phrased that way, the question presupposes a view of the Church as a repressive institution that not only tells people what to believe, but also tells them that they’re not welcome unless they can sign on the dotted line at the bottom of a detailed laundry list of authoritative teachings. But while such denominations may exist, they’re not the Church that I know.

 

Now, I’m not saying that dogmas and doctrines are unimportant—on the contrary, they’re crucially important—but they don’t function as the criterion of eligibility for membership in quite that way. The traditional, premodern concept of the Church is much more that of an organic community comprising all sorts and conditions of people, whose life together involves participation in worship, fellowship, and mission—grounded in a common faith, to be sure, but whose grasp of that faith as individuals may not always be complete or perfect.

 

Consider: We baptize infants and consider them full members of the church even though they haven’t yet attained the ability to assent to any coherent system of teachings and beliefs. Then consider individuals who suffer from severe mental disabilities, who can have only the simplest and most childlike understanding of the Christian teachings: we baptize, confirm, and communicate them nonetheless, considering them just as fully members of the Body of Christ as the most learned and orthodox theologians.

 

The point is that all without exception are welcome, regardless of doubts, questions, and confusions. Certain types of behavior are indeed unwelcome in the Church’s life—and how to define the boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate behavior is an ongoing challenge that merits serious attention. But again, while certain ways of acting may need to be checked at the door, nonetheless, everyone is invited; everyone is welcome.

 

So, to return to our original question. What does the Church require us to believe as its members? Phrased that way, it’s the wrong question. Assent to the articles of Christian faith cannot legitimately be required of anyone. People can and do believe all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, but few of us ever believe anything just because some external authority has commanded us to do so.

 

Our business, then, is not to require acceptance of the Church’s teachings, but rather to proclaim them joyfully and to invite people to hear, consider, and assent to them insofar as it’s given them to do so. A favorite maxim of Pope John Paul II was “the Church imposes nothing, she only proposes.” Faith is a gift; and it’s against the very nature of a gift to be compelled or coerced. On the contrary, it remains a gift only insofar as it’s offered, accepted, and received in the fullness of human freedom.

 

Some years ago, a well-known Eastern Orthodox bishop and theologian visited a prestigious Methodist seminary in the South to lecture on the Nicene Creed. During the question period at the end of the lecture, one of the students rose and earnestly protested: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to believe the part about Christ rising from the dead.” Without missing a beat, the bishop replied, “Well, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re still very young. Just keep saying the Creed, and eventually you’ll get it.”

 

Utterly confused, the student asked, “But wouldn’t it be dishonest and hypocritical of me to profess publicly what I don’t believe in my heart?” “Oh,” said the bishop, “Now I see your problem! But you misunderstand! What the Nicene Creed professes isn’t your own personal faith, but the corporate faith of the Holy Catholic Church! None of us can expect to get it all at once. Trust that the Church understands much more than you do. Just keep saying the Creed, and eventually the Holy Spirit will grant you the faith and understanding you seek.”

 

Today, then, we join in joyfully proclaiming the Church’s faith in Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. This Easter proclamation is not an oppressive dogma to be required of anyone as a precondition of anything, but a gift of great good news to be treasured and shared: God’s pledge to us of our own resurrection and his offer of eternal life in Christ. Our mission is to invite all people everywhere to make this faith their own as and when God grants them the grace to do so. And then we go forward together, rejoicing in the risen life that is ours in Christ Jesus our Savior.

 

EASTER VIGIL

April 19, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

 

It’s not surprising that Christ’s Resurrection is a principal subject of Christian art. In the Western Church, paintings and statues often depict the Risen Jesus emerging triumphant from the tomb, perhaps with the soldiers sleeping on either side of the rolled back stone—such as we have on the back cover of this evening’s bulletin. Another frequent theme is that of his appearing to Mary Magdalene, which we’ll consider tomorrow morning.

 

In the Eastern Church, however, the artistic tradition is very different. On the front cover of the bulletin is an Eastern Orthodox depiction of the Resurrection or Anastasis. It depicts Christ standing astride a great set of fallen gates—which in many versions of the icon have landed in the figure of a cross. With the nail-prints visible in his hands and feet, Jesus reaches down with one hand to grasp the hand of a man rising from a tomb. The man is Adam. Next to him is Eve, rising from her tomb. Other figures stand by, also having risen from their graves, often including King David, John the Baptist, and other great kings and prophets of Israel.

 

This rather strange image depicts symbolically what happened during the interval between our Lord’s death on the cross on Good Friday, and his rising from the tomb on Easter Sunday: namely, his descent into hell. The Apostles’ Creed states that after Jesus died and was buried, “he descended to the dead,” and “on the third day he rose again.” Yet during Holy Week it’s all too easy to go straight from the death and burial on Friday afternoon to the Resurrection on Sunday morning, without pausing to consider anything in between.

 

The Great Vigil of Easter as we now celebrate it has been revived within living memory. Over the years, people have occasionally asked me the same question about the Easter Vigil: Why are we celebrating Easter when it’s not yet Easter morning? Beyond explaining that in Jewish tradition the next day begins at sunset, a good part of the answer is that on Easter Day we celebrate what happens during the daylight: the finding of the empty tomb and the Risen Lord’s appearances to the women and the disciples. But during the Great Vigil we focus instead on the deep mystery of what happens in the dark solitude of Christ’s tomb before dawn. Indeed, at the beginning of the liturgy the church is darkened precisely to resemble the interior of a tomb. On this most holy night, then, it seems appropriate to say something about what our tradition calls the harrowing of hell.

 

The New Testament briefly mentions Christ’s descent into hell in several places. The most detailed reference occurs in the First Letter of Peter. The apostle writes that Jesus was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison” (3:18-19). A bit later, he adds: “For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God” (4:6).

 

Paul writes in his Letter to the Ephesians, that Christ “descended into the lower parts of the earth,” and then that later he “ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things” (4:9-10).

 

In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, first quotes Psalm 16, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption,” and then says that in the psalm David “foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption” (2:31). These words suggest that while Christ’s body rested incorrupt in the tomb, his soul went to the abode of the dead, but did not remain there.

 

One final point of importance is that in the many places where the New Testament writers speak of Christ being raised from the dead, the phrase “from the dead” in the original Greek means not “from the state of death,” but rather, literally, “from among the dead ones.”

 

Based on this scriptural evidence, Christian tradition came to understand that when Jesus died and his body was placed in the tomb, his soul left his body and descended into the place known in Hebrew as Sheol, and in Greek as Hades: not the hell of eternal punishment prepared for the unrepentant after the Last Judgment, but rather that shadowy realm where the spirits of the dead were awaiting their Redeemer.

 

Here, instead of becoming a prisoner himself, Christ trampled down the gates, crushed the power of the devil, proclaimed the Good News, and set free the imprisoned souls awaiting their redeemer. Finally, his soul ascended and rejoined his body, lying incorrupt in the tomb awaiting resurrection.

 

This doctrine of Christ’s descent into hell points to at least three truths of importance for us today.

 

First, Jesus truly experienced death. From his conception, he passed through all the stages of human existence, both on this side of the grave and beyond. And this means that he’s present with us and for us in every stage of our life and death. As we go down into the grave, he’s already there waiting for us. Not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

 

Second, by descending into hell, Christ has made his presence known in every part of creation, from the highest heaven to the lowest depths. Specifically, by preaching the Gospel to those who died before him, he shows that his offer of eternal salvation extends to all people in all times and in all places, both the living and the dead.

 

And third, by ascending from hell after descending there, he manifests his victory over death: a victory which will become known when he appears to the women and the disciples on the first day of the week; and a victory in which we share by being baptized into his Body, the Church.

 

Tomorrow, we shall celebrate the empty tomb’s discovery and the Risen Lord’s appearances in the full light of day. But this evening, we rejoice, give thanks, and celebrate—for, in the words of the Exsultet: “This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.”

GOOD FRIDAY LITURGY

April 18, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark Episcopal Church, Barrington, R. I.

The cross is the supreme symbol of Christian faith. Apart from its role as an instrument of torture and death, some commentators see its intersection of vertical and horizontal beams as a visual symbol of Incarnation. The vertical beam symbolizes transcendence. It points to heaven above, and to eternity. The horizontal beam symbolizes immanence. It points to the world around us, the here and the now. So, the cross’s intersection of vertical and horizontal beams signifies the union of eternity and time, spirit and matter, divine and human, in the Person of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.

 

The Lord’s death on a wooden cross on the hill of Golgotha also exhibits vertical and horizontal dimensions. Up the vertical axis, the suffering Jesus offers to his Father in heaven the one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; and the Father looks down from heaven lovingly accepting his Son’s sacrifice. Along the horizontal axis, the dying Lord stretches out his arms of love to gather in all humanity and all creation; and conversely his life, forgiveness, grace, and strength flow out from his outstretched arms to the world’s remotest ends.

 

This ancient Good Friday liturgy has four parts. They oscillate back and forth between these vertical and horizontal dimensions. First, our attention is drawn upwards, vertically, to Jesus lifted high upon the cross. Then, our attention is redirected outwards, horizontally, to the world he died to save. And then the pattern repeats itself. So let’s look at how this pattern plays out in our worship today.

 

We begin with the Liturgy of the Word, culminating in the Passion according to Saint John. It focuses our attention vertically, upwards, towards Jesus and what happened to him on Good Friday. The Passion Gospel is read dramatically, with readers taking the various spoken parts—or at least the congregation joining in the crowd’s parts. This kind of reading is very effective and moving. The goal is a performative recitation, aiming not merely at remembering something that happened long ago, but at making it vivid and real, transporting us back into the past, so that we become virtual eyewitnesses; or, conversely, bringing it forward into the present so that we experience it here and now in all its naked terror. In this way, we’re able to answer affirmatively the question posed in the old spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Yes, we were there. We are there.

Then, following a sermon or homily, which is ideally kept brief, we turn our attention from the cross outwards, horizontally, towards the world, reciting the ancient prayers known as the Solemn Collects. This movement has a deep inner logic. It’s not simply that since we really have nothing to say, we may as well just say some prayers. No, having listened to the Passion Gospel, we ask God to apply the benefits of his Son’s death “to all people everywhere, according to their needs.” We make these prayers in the assurance that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” The Church’s response to the proclamation of the Lord’s death is thus to pray for all those for whom he died.

 

Continuing our alternation from the horizontal to the vertical, we turn our attention once again to the cross, this time in loving adoration. A cross is brought in for the congregation’s veneration. The rubrics specify that this cross must be made of wood, like the cross on which Jesus was crucified. This ceremony dates back to fourth-century Jerusalem, where worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher would line up for hours on Good Friday to kiss a large fragment of the true Cross that would be unveiled and exposed for that purpose.

 

Then comes the fourth part of the liturgy, known as the Mass of the Presanctified. We retrieve from the Altar of Repose the Blessed Sacrament reserved at last night’s liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. There is no fresh offering of the Holy Eucharist, but Communion from the Reserved Sacrament—an extension of the single Triduum liturgy that began last night.

 

This Holy Communion of Good Friday conveys the Lord’s life, grace, and power to all who receive it. Having venerated Christ on the cross, we receive him into ourselves—not just for comfort and consolation, but also for empowerment as ambassadors of Christ’s forgiveness and healing. So we have another turn to the horizontal. Just as in the Solemn Collects we prayed for the world that Christ died to save, so now in receiving Communion we offer ourselves to carry forth Christ’s salvation into that same world.

 

Following Communion, we leave in silence. There’s nothing left to say. For the time being, the Incarnate Word has been silenced. We do well to keep silence too, waiting in trembling hope and expectation for what God will do next.

  

NOONDAY PRAYER & STATIONS

Good Friday 

April 18, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

John 19:25-27

 

In a few minutes, we’ll be participating in the devotion known as the Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross. One part of this devotion’s appeal, I believe, is that it emphasizes the role of women in our Lord’s Passion and death on Good Friday. In Station Six, a woman from the crowd, traditionally named Veronica, wipes the face of Jesus. And in Station Eight, Jesus addresses the women of Jerusalem, who are bewailing and lamenting him. The Blessed Virgin Mary features explicitly in Stations Four, Twelve, and Thirteen. The hymn Stabat Mater, traditionally sung during the procession from one station to the next, views the Way of the Cross from the viewpoint of Jesus’ Mother: At the cross her station keeping / Stood the mournful mother weeping / Close to Jesus at the last.

 

Today I want to focus specifically on Station Twelve, Jesus dies on the Cross. The appointed reading for this station quotes the Passion according to Saint John: “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’”

 

The following verse adds: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” Some biblical scholars suggest that Jesus’ words to his Mother and the Beloved Disciple amount to nothing more than a dying man’s last-minute disposition of family affairs, ensuring that his Mother will be provided for after he’s gone. And that’s indeed part of what’s taking place.

 

(Incidentally, this interpretation supports belief in Mary’s perpetual virginity, for if she and Joseph had had other male offspring after Our Lord’s birth, then this responsibility would have passed automatically to them, and no such provision would have been necessary.)

 

But as any serious student of the New Testament knows, nothing is ever that simple in John’s Gospel. Beyond the level of literal meaning, Our Lord’s words frequently communicate profound and sublime truths at multiple levels of symbolic meaning. There’s no reason why this episode in particular should prove any exception to that general rule.

 

To understand the deeper meaning of what’s happening, we need to look at two more words that John uses. First is the Lord’s form of address to his Mother: “Woman.” In that cultural and linguistic context the term is not as disrespectful as it might be in contemporary English, but it’s nonetheless highly unusual. The second is the word “hour,” in John’s comment, “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

 

Both words, “woman” and “hour,” have appeared together before, in John’s account of the miracle of water changed into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. There, Our Lord also addressed his mother as “Woman,” remarking enigmatically, “My hour has not yet come.” Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus has spoken repeatedly of his approaching “hour.” So now, when John remarks that “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home,” we’re given to understand that this hour he’s been speaking about all along has finally arrived.

 

In this context, the form of address, “Woman,” clearly implies that Mary is the New Eve—Eve being of course the original Woman. The name Eve, we recall from Genesis 3:20, means “mother of all living.” We recall also that in Genesis 3:15, God tells the serpent who’s brought about humanity’s downfall, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head; and you shall bruise his heel.” On the Cross, then, the hour has finally come when the woman’s offspring defeats our ancient enemy, the devil.

 

That symbolism by itself would be rich enough. But there’s more. The words “woman” and “hour” occur together in yet another place in John’s Gospel. In his Farewell Discourse at the Last Supper, Our Lord tells a parable describing how his disciples will suffer when they see him betrayed, arrested, condemned, and crucified, but then will rejoice when they witness his Resurrection from the dead: “When a woman is in travail she has sorrow because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers her anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.”

 

At the foot of the Cross, Mary fulfills this image of the woman in travail and sorrow because the hour has come. Some early Christian writers describe Our Lord’s sufferings on the Cross and his Mother’s sorrows as a kind of birth pangs of a new creation. And a key result is precisely her new maternal relationship with the Beloved Disciple into whose care Our Lord entrusts her.

 

That reflection brings us to the significance of the Beloved Disciple himself. Traditionally, he’s been identified with the Apostle John, and I see no reason to dispute that identification. But again, nothing is ever that simple in John’s Gospel! In addition to being a specific person, the disciple whom Jesus loves is also a representative figure, an ideal disciple, a model of discipleship.

 

When Our Lord names the Beloved Disciple the son of Mary, and Mary the Mother of the Beloved Disciple, the unavoidable implication is that he’s instituting a new relationship between his Mother and all Christian disciples in all times and places. Just as the first Eve was mother of all living, so Mary, the second Eve, becomes the Mother of all who live in Christ.

 

The invitation and challenge to us, then, is to do as the Beloved Disciple did. Alone among the disciples, he remained at the foot of the cross when all the other disciples fled. And from that hour he took Mary into his own home. John’s Greek can also be translated more broadly, to signify that he “welcomed Mary into his life.” In this respect, he stands as a model and example for us all! At the foot of the cross, we become sons and daughters of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, into whose maternal care her divine Son, entrusts us in that most solemn moment.

MAUNDY THURSDAY

April 17, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

 

The Liturgy of Maundy Thursday commemorates our Lord’s Last Supper with his disciples on the eve of his death: an event where he washes his disciples’ feet, institutes the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, and ordains the twelve apostles to the priesthood of the new Covenant.

 

A key point is that these events are not merely a prelude to Good Friday, a few last-minute items that need to be checked off and gotten out of the way before he leaves. Instead, they’re integral and interrelated parts of a greater whole: the mystery of our redemption.

 

At supper, he bids his disciples continue gathering to eat together, just as they’ve been doing regularly all along. But to the usual Jewish blessings said at the breaking of the bread before the meal, and the sharing of the cup after it, Jesus now adds new, unprecedented, and indeed shocking words: “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me … This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

 

These words interpret what will happen the next day. At the time, the disciples likely have no idea of what Jesus means. What he says over the bread and wine will only make sense later, after his body has been lifted high on the cross and his blood spilt for the life of the world. And thereafter his words will carry that same meaning whenever Christians gather to break the bread and share the cup in his Name. His Crucifixion thus supplies the key to understanding the words he speaks over the bread and the wine at the last Supper.

 

Conversely, those same words interpret and explain the meaning of the Crucifixion itself. We’re able to understand the full significance of Christ’s death on the cross only in light of his words at the Last Supper: “This is my body, which is given for you …” “This is my blood … poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” So, we can’t fully understand the Last Supper except by looking ahead to the Crucifixion; and we can’t fully understand the Crucifixion except by looking back at the Last Supper. Neither event is fully intelligible on its own. Saint Paul sums up this mutual interpretation neatly in this evening’s reading from his First Epistle to the Corinthians when he writes: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

But there’s more. When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” the Greek word translated as remembrance, anamnesis, means something more than mere recollection in a subjective psychological sense. It signifies instead the transformation of time itself, a making present of past events. So, his words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” really mean something like, “Do this to call me into your midst again so that I will be present among you as I am now.”

 

This “making present” refers first to the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in which from the beginning the Church has discerned the real presence of Our Lord’s Body and Blood. It refers secondly to the Church itself, the Body of Christ, which continues Our Lord’s life and work on earth until he returns to judge the living and the dead at the end of time.

 

So, Jesus gives us another sign to show us what his becoming present in his Church looks like when it happens. He girds on a towel and washes his disciples’ feet. On Maundy Thursday we repeat this ritual foot-washing as the symbol of our obedience to his commandment to love one another as he has loved us. (The word “Maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum, or commandment.)

 

But it would be a grave mistake, reflecting a fatal flaw in our understanding of the Rites of Maundy Thursday, to take the foot-washing merely as a bit of exemplary moral advice given as a parting shot to his disciples—along the lines of “here’s how I want you to carry on with me”—which I fear is what we’re so often tempted to make of it. For again, like his words over the bread and the cup, the foot-washing derives its full meaning from the Lord’s death on the cross the next day.

 

A key text for interpreting Our Lord’s washing his disciples’ feet is the famous passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

 

This passage makes explicit the connection between Christ’s taking the form of a servant and his becoming obedient even to death on a cross. By taking the role of a domestic servant and washing his disciples’ feet, much to their horror and dismay, Jesus points to his ultimate act of servanthood the next day when he offers his life for the sins of the whole world.

 

So, the foot-washing and the crucifixion are also mutually interpretive: the foot-washing symbolizes death to self in the service of others; and death to self in service to others receives its ultimate expression in the spilled blood that washes us clean from our sins. Understood this way, the foot-washing exemplifies the Christian life’s pattern of self-sacrificial service to others: loving one another as Christ has loved us—always bearing in mind that the cross is the place where his love for us reaches its perfect fulfillment.

 

This evening’s liturgy invites us, then, to answer Our Lord’s call to take up our cross and follow him—first by meeting together faithfully to break the bread and share the cup as he has commanded us, and then by going out into the world to serve others in his Name, thus fulfilling his new commandment to love one another as he has loved us.