Monsignor Ryan’s Homily for Holy Thursday

HOLY THURSDAY OF THE LORD’S SUPPER -2019

Recently, I read an Op Ed piece entitled, “Does Anyone Collect Old Emails?” The author recounts that when his father passed away in 1999, he saved a folder of handwritten condolence letters from his friends and colleagues. “Reading them once or twice a year,” he wrote, “I am transported back to times I miss so much.” And he further recalls that his mother left behind albums and shoe boxes filled with handwritten report cards, photos aplenty, postcards from summer camp in which she had lovingly archived her children’s lives. I thought of that column when I read the news reports about the heroic efforts of Father Jean-Marc Fornier, the chaplain of the Paris Fire Department to remove and save priceless relics from the burning Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Our communal identity is intimately bound up with our collective memory, whether it be the collective memory of a parish, a nation, a city, a family, a universal church. And because we are embodied spirits, those memories are inseparably attached to objects such as Jesus’ Crown of Thorns, the tunic of King Louis, the first postcard received from a summer camper, a lock of hair, a bronzed baby shoe, a sacred icon. And our memories are kept alive by way of ritual.
The great leaders of our religious tradition knew that truth; and on this sacred night we listen to three giants of our history explain how sacred foods, table rituals and stylized gestures of humility reinforce our identity as the People of God.
Moses gives detailed instructions to the Israelites about the smearing of their lintels and doorposts with lambs’ blood. He provides a detailed menu for their last meal in slavery, and he enjoins them to repeat the sacrifice and meal for all generations lest they forget who they are and how they got to be who they are.
Jesus commands his disciples to love one another and to put themselves at the service of one another. But, because he knows that actions speak louder than words, he performs a startling act of humility by washing their feet. He wants them to demonstrate a similar humility in dealing with one another; and so we perform the annual washing of feet to remind ourselves year after year that we must strive to approach the example of love he gave us.
St. Paul impresses upon his converts at Corinth the necessity of repeating Jesus’ words and actions at the Last Supper. They not only serve as a reminder of what Jesus did the night before he died, they make the Lord present in his sacrificial offering of himself each time they break the bread and share the cup. Further along, Paul will add some advice about table manners at this holy banquet.
The morning after the fire at Notre Dame, Archbishop Michel Aupetit told a television interviewer something the world needed to hear: “Why was this beauty built?” he asked. “What jewel was this case meant to contain? Not the crown of thorns. It was built for a piece of bread, that bread that we believe is the body of Christ.”
He is correct, of course, to focus attention on the one essential, irreplaceable object and ritual of our faith. There can be a Catholic Church, an assembly of the People of God in history without a crown of thorns or a set of stained-glass windows or a particular cathedral, no matter how beautiful. There can never, never be a Catholic Church without the Eucharist.
Still, beauty in art and architecture and music and ritual have a role to play in lifting our spirits up to God. Stained glass windows are like the photos of beloved ancestors. They tell the stories that convey our history and shape our identity A Crown of Thorns keeps vividly before our eyes and in our minds the harsh and terrible love of our Savior that has made us who and what we are.
So, we begin our Easter Triduum by washing feet and celebrating the Eucharist to proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. But as the days unfold, we will kiss a cross, and kindle a sacred candle and share its flame. We will bless food and gather around tables laden for a festive meal after our fast.
This Holy Week we will give thanks that a magnificent church was spared total destruction and we pray that before long a high priest will stand at its altar once again to lead the people of Paris in the ancient, but ever-new Eucharistic liturgy. Meanwhile we humbly fill our Lord’s command to wash one another’s feet as we do this in memory of him.