The Body of Christ
March 20, 2008

Readings for Holy Thursday

Reading 1: Ex. 12:1–8, 11–14

Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 116:12–13, 15–16bc, 17–18

Reading 2: 1 Cor. 11:23–26

Gospel: Jn. 13:1–15

Link to Readings

Go to the Good Friday homily.

By Father James Dunfee

I begin with a seemingly insignificant statement: We must be taught to receive the Eucharist. Whether a person is in second grade or way past 21, he or she does not automatically receive the Eucharist, but must be taught, and sometimes taught over and over again. What must he or she be taught? That is what the readings answer for us this evening.

We have been told by many liturgists that Holy Thursday is not to have a Eucharistic theme, that we should dwell on service and Christian charity. But this is to ignore the profound and central meaning of the Eucharist: that besides having a small wafer placed on our hand, that we become what we receive, and therefore we are called to act what we receive. When liturgists say that we should focus on service instead of the Eucharist, they are making a divorce between Eucharist and service, when instead they should be seeing their inseparable and harmonious marriage. Peter, I think, understood this, which is why he shuddered when Our Lord wanted to wash his feet. Do our lives have a Eucharistic form? Do we have Eucharistic attitudes? Is our behavior impelled and influenced by the Eucharist?

Experience Freedom

We read this evening of the institution of the Passover (which begins this year, by the way, on April 19). The Passover is no small event for the Jews. It is the most historically remembered event of an exodus, of being saved from slavery. Every person in some sense can identify with the Jews and being saved from a harsh, dictatorial regime or person—from the neighborhood bully, or the insensitive bureaucrat, or the tyrannical teacher. Many experience freedom when they give up drinking or drugs or some other addiction. We are called to freedom through the Eucharist, in which we learn to live the life of Christ in the here and the now.

The sacraments are wonderful things. They do for us what the Passover does for the Jews: They make the whole reality of the Exodus present again. For the Jews, Passover is God freeing His people again—that very same liberation of 4,000 years ago. For us, the Sacraments make Christ present, and the Sacrament of the Eucharist makes the paschal mystery of Christ present to us. The ancient Israelites considered themselves a changed people when they were liberated. They couldn’t have gone back to Egypt—even though they sometimes wanted too! Still, they must have been pretty exhilarated that night. Excitement and the fever of getting away, of being released, must have run so high that it would have been impossible to quell. And that excitement was to be made into a perpetual institution, which for us is the Eucharist.

In the Eucharist we find our liberation and our reason for existing. The Church tells us in the Second Vatican Council that the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life—that we start with it and end with it. That at every single moment we are to be inebriated with it. That, body and soul, we are nourished with it. That our spirits are replenished with the Saving Victim.

“In Remembrance of Me”

St. Paul exhorts the Corinthians, “Do this in remembrance of me.” He repeats what Jesus commanded His disciples. But we are wrong if we understand that “Do this in memory of me” refers to breaking bread and eating it only. For Paul goes on, “Every time then you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” We must proclaim the death of the Lord! And we must proclaim it by the way we live. When Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me,” He was telling His disciples, “Go to Gethsemane” in memory of me. Be betrayed in memory of me. Be crucified in memory of me. Be mocked and spat upon in memory of me. Allow someone to wipe your bleeding face in memory of me. Have your feet washed in memory of me. Love one another as I have loved you in memory of me. Avoid a word of gossip in memory of me. Suffer well in memory of me. Refuse to complain in memory of me.

All the commands Christ gave us we do in memory of him, for like the Jews at Passover and we in the Eucharist, what we do is not a mere memory—it is God Himself, present to us and teaching us how to receive Him, Body and Soul, over and over again. It is God making us ever more truly and really into the one Body of Christ, a Body of Love.

Father James Dunfee is a priest of the Diocese of Steubenville.

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