28-Mar-2010 Dear Friend,
Most people love parties and celebrations because they enjoy ourselves and have a good time. People throw a party to celebrate an occasion and share their joy and happiness with others. At a party you are a guest and you don’t have to pay anything, it’s all free and on the house! At the end of his life, knowing that it is drawing to a close, Jesus invites his disciples to a party, a parting meal in which he gives everything he has, himself, to his disciples and us. In faith, in the Eucharist, we celebrate God’s gift to us and our own readiness to give ourselves to others! Life is for giving….for serving! Let’s celebrate a life of giving! Jesus’ life-giving, and our own! Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections: Holy Thursday ‘To love is to be ready to serve the other!’ 1-Apr-2010 Exodus 12:1-14 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15 The first reading gives an account of the institution of the Passover as a permanent feast in Israel and it indicates the prescribed rites. The feast was primarily a memorial sacrifice, a reminder of what God had done for them, his covenant and his fidelity to his promises. At each celebration the Israelites would look back at the Passover, what God had done for them, and also look forward to the future, what God was going to do for them. The ritual was to be celebrated in community, for God was saving His people; they would eat the Passover meal in haste, knowing that they were called to move on from slavery to freedom; they would recall the suffering as they ate bitter herbs, the price paid. They were to always remember and ‘Do this,’ celebrate this meal, in memory of what God had done for his people! True Worship Of The Heart There is a story about some monks in France who were popular for their loving sympathy and kind deeds, but not one of them could sing. Try as they would, the music of their services was a failure, and it became a great grief to them that only in their hearts could they ‘make melody to the Lord’. One day a travelling monk, a great singer, asked for hospitality. Great was their joy, for now they could have him sing for their services, and they hoped to keep him with them always. But that night an angel came to the abbot in a dream. “Why was there no music in your chapel tonight? We always listen for beautiful music that rises in your services.” “You must be mistaken!” cried the abbot. “Usually we have no music worth hearing, but tonight, we had a trained singer with a wonderful voice, and he sang the service for us. For the first time in all these years our music was beautiful.” The angel smiled. “And yet up in heaven we heard nothing,” he said softly. Quoted from ‘Sunday Companion’ in ‘Quotes and Anecdotes’ While the other evangelists give a detailed description of the last supper Passover meal, John is the only one who makes no explicit reference to this Passover sacrifice. Perhaps John, whose work is called the Gospel of Glory, sought to forestall any misinterpretation of his portrayal of the power and authority of Christ. Now, on the last night of his life, Jesus bends to the basin, and brings us back to the world of suffering humanity where for so many people every day brings with it the humiliation of being weak, broken and human. In place of the Eucharist we have the enactment of what the Eucharist is all about: bending to serve, taking the position of a slave and washing the feet of his disciples. The disciples and especially Peter cannot understand and accept what the Master is doing. ”You shall never wash my feet.” said Peter. Jesus reminded him that without service of this kind he could not be his disciple. To drive the point home and remind his disciples that this was not pretence but real Jesus said, “If I then your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you too must wash each other’s feet.” Jesus washed all of them, one by one, thoroughly. He washed the feet of all of us, believers and unbelievers, old and young, saints and sinners, popes and priests and laity, rulers and ruled, filled and hungry…. He washed and washed, without looking at whose feet he was washing. He never intended to stop, because he said: Do you understand what I am doing? I gave you a model of what you should do: Wash each others feet, and after that, break your bread, sharing it all over the world, all over humanity, until I am with you in the kingdom to come. “‘Do this in memory of me’, said Jesus, after he had instituted the Eucharist. ‘Copy what I have done’ he had said after the washing of the feet. Both commandments are directed to the same mystery: the commemoration of the Lord. The introduction to the ‘Book of Glory’ (John chapters 13-21) shows how Jesus fully revealed himself as the hour of his passing had come. From its opening phrase, the ‘book’ quickly establishes that this revelation is the revelation of God’s love manifested by Jesus. Bowed and kneeling in the posture of a slave, he washes the feet of his disciples. This act of lowly service tells us something about God: the Father, who is the source of love; the Son, who is Servant; the Holy Spirit who reveals Father and Son. But to understand the meaning of this prophetic act, to ‘know’ as Jesus ‘knows’, one must have seen Jesus lifted on the cross and have begun to act as he acted. Only then will the disciples understand the true meaning of that lowly service which characterized all Christ’s life. The washing of the feet had an unsuspected depth of meaning. When inspired by love, the least service rendered to one’s neighbour takes on an extraordinary dimension; it foreshadows that total sacrifice for which everyone should be prepared; that full communion towards which we should all be moving. But we can only do this by accepting the Servant Christ following him – even to the suffering of his passion. In this we must let an authentic spirit of poverty awaken in us. Only then will the revealing of the Father’s compassion lead us to understand also the sense of his Son’s sacrifice. And, with our eyes finally opened to the needs of our brothers, we shall be moved to become like Jesus, people who see and act.” -Glenstal Bible Missal The Beloved Captain Donald Hankey’s The Beloved Captain tells how the captain cared for his men’s feet. After long marches he went into the barracks to inspect the feet of his soldiers. He’d get down on his hands and knees to take a good look at the worst cases. If a blister needed lancing, he’d frequently lance it himself.”There was no affectation about this,” says Donald Hankey. “It seemed to have a touch of Christ about it, and we loved and honoured him the more” for it. – Is there a ‘touch of Christ’ about our concern for our brothers and sisters? “Jesus, my feet are dirty…. Pour water into your basin and come and wash my feet. I know that I am overbold in asking this, but I dread your warning, when you said, “If I do not wash your feet, you can have no companionship with me.” Wash my feet, then, because I do want your companionship.” Mark Link in ‘Daily Homilies’ The Peter Principle Some years ago, a popular book called The Peter Principle was based on the premise that too often a person climbing the managerial ladder was promoted one step above his capacity to manage. A Christian variation on this theme could be called ‘The Simon Peter Principle,’ a rule which holds that St. Peter the Apostle, was always over his head when assaying the humanity of Jesus. From the day when Jesus called Peter ‘Satan’ for supposing that he could escape human suffering to the night before he died, Peter clung to the belief that Jesus was somehow too good or too holy or too powerful to have to submit to the evil designs of his persecutors. To Peter’s mind, it was impossible that the Master could be so humbled. The ‘Simon Peter Principle’ lives on today in all of us who think that Jesus merely donned the cloak of humanity and went through the motions of human trial and suffering to set an example for the rest of us who are mired in the flesh. We pin our hopes in a God who could throw off his mantle of flesh at any moment and strike dead his tormentors. When alone in intimacy with the savior, we say with Peter, “You shall never wash my feet,” meaning, “Come on, I know who you really are. You can drop your pose with me.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes our acceptance of his total and authentic humanity a requirement for sharing his heritage. To be a Christian means much more than believing in God’s son come to earth. It means accepting the fact that God could be, and chose to be, and was humiliated…. Not just humble, but humiliated. We have seen kings and presidents and Popes behave humbly. We know that they can drop the pose any time. But Jesus could not drop the pose. It was no pose. Once he made the choice to drain the cup of suffering, there was no turning back. Jesus bent to the basin because a fully human being could find no other way of expressing sublime love. Roger Swenson in ‘The Serious Season’ Under New Management A newly baptized person got a job. The company required of its workers to wear a navy blue uniform. The first day he wore his uniform, he returned from work sad. He told his wife every worker has to have a message printed on his shirt. She promptly printed a three word message. The next day he returned from work and his face was filled with happiness. He told his wife everyone liked the message. It fitted well with my baptismal commitment I made to the Lord. The message on his shirt read, ‘Under New Management.’ Leslie Miranda in ’40 days of Lent’ The Man With No Shoes In the winter of 1990, I was asked to appear on a television talk show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. At the end of our first day of taping I was on my way back to my plush hotel, when I saw something I’d never seen before. Lying on the sidewalk against a building in four inches of snow was a man sleeping with only a cardboard blanket to keep him from being completely exposed to the freezing cold. What really broke my heart was when I realized that he wore no shoes or socks. I thought to stop and help him but was not quite sure what to do. As the traffic light turned green, it seemed life was demanding that I move along. So I did and I promptly forgot about the man on the street. Several days later, prior to the morning taping, I was having coffee and Danish in the green room at the station. All of the “Important” people had left the room said it was just me and the janitor remaining. I had seen him quietly go about his business every day while I was there, and he never said a word except “Good morning” or “Can I get anything for you, sir?” He always had a smile to give to everyone. When I asked him how he was feeling today, he told me that he’d been having to ride his bike to work in the snow and that he’d been feeling rather sorry for himself…that is, until he saw a man sleeping down on the corner of Yonge Street and Bloor with just a piece of cardboard for covering from the cold and no shoes. I almost choked on my Danish as I heard him go on to relate how he was so moved with compassion for the man that he went around the corner to a store and bought the man a pair of socks and shoes. As I heard his story, I saw in my mind a poster that used to be in an old friend’s bedroom handing someone a flower and the caption read: “The smallest deed always exceeds the grandest of intentions.” Fr. Sudac in ‘Hear His Voice’ May our devotion to the Eucharist be seen in our service to our fellow humans! Fr. Jude Botelho [email protected] PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in these reflections. These reflections are also available on my web site www.netforlife.net Thank you. Your Mail works best with the New Yahoo Optimized IE8. Get it NOW! http://downloads.yahoo.com/in/internetexplorer/
