Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
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“They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer.” (Psalm 78:35)
On this Holy Thursday, thanks to the witness of the Apostle Paul we remember the Lord’s Supper. We remember the last supper with simple bread and wine.
Bread and wine bring powerful memories of togetherness and connectedness for me. In my family no proper dinner was served without the accompaniment of bread and wine.
I learned to make bread by watching my grandfather Jules Delcourt preparing loaves for the family. He would sometimes let me snitch a bit of raw dough.
When we made our own bread, my father Jacques Delcourt would start the meal by scratching the sign of the cross on the crust with the bread knife and then cutting a few slices for us.
This would remind us whom we ultimately got our daily bread from. My father helped to provide for it but all our needs were provided for by God.
So the use of bread and wine as the elements of the Eucharist is deeply resonant for me. It not only evokes my family and church heritages. It also evokes Christian community near and far, the mystical body of Christ.
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Paul’s telling of the Lord’s Supper is chronologically the first written record of it. Paul hands on to us a treasure that was handed on to him from the Lord, he says, through the disciples of Jesus most probably.
This brief passage in the first epistle to the Corinthians is also referred to as “the words of institution;” the words by which Jesus institutes the sacrament of his Body and Blood in the form of the Eucharist. That’s why they sound so familiar. We hear them time and again during Mass.
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Paul tells us of Jesus handing over to the disciples the elements of the bread and wine. With his prayer of thanksgiving and his words Jesus symbolically is handing over his body and blood to the apostles.
Later that evening, his flesh and blood are handed over to the religious authorities.
The next day his body and blood are then handed over to death on the cross at the hands of the civil authorities.
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That evening, Jesus understands what the love of God and love of his disciples are leading him to. And he consents to it. He has understood this for a long while now. He tried to prepare his disciples for it.
But he wants to, he needs to, be remembered. And through that very human need, he gives us the most blest sacrament.
When I try to imagine what Jesus’ many feelings may have been that evening, his words are made particularly poignant. “Do this in remembrance of me.”
I imagine he must have been feeling fear and sadness. At the same time, he must have trusted in God, and longed for God.
Did he experience regret at not having more time for his ministry, Or did he have regrets for the paths not chosen in his earthly life? Was he tempted by anger at the looming betrayals?
In any case, he chose to focus his message on remembrance and love. He wanted the apostles to have a symbol by which to remember and experience his message of love. And he wanted them to have a simple yet powerful symbol by which to share his meaning with the wider world.
He took everyday foods available at the Passover table and transformed them into symbols that will carry through the ages.
We offer thanks tonight for Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist. As we will offer thanks through this Triduum for his passion, death, and resurrection. All three of these are included in the Eucharist.
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These Eucharistic symbols that make tangible God’s ever-present grace are so easily available at Jesus’ Passover table. And yet, for many, they have been hard or impossible to come by in these times of pandemic.
Some churches have restarted worship in person but not all, and many people are still wary of the contagion risks involved in in-person worship.
Our little band of brothers has been very lucky to be able to continue to celebrate the Eucharist this past year. We have been aware of the great privilege afforded us by the fact that we are a single household that could continue to receive the Blessed Sacrament together.
Besides receiving the Body and Blood of Chist at the Eucharist, many brothers spend quality time in front of the tabernacle where consecrated hosts are reserved. We are blessed in all those ways.
But it is important to remember that those blessings are not imprisoned within the walls of churches. The sacrament of the Eucharist is but a tangible sign of an ever-present grace from God. God is in the tabernacle and God is everywhere else too.
Wherever we are, God is not separate or remote from us.
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I am regularly reminded of the root of our word Eucharist. I comes from the Greek Eukharistia which means "thanksgiving, gratitude." I loved discovering the word “thank you” when I visited Greece as a young man. Greeks say Efharisto several times a day. That seems about right for me; to give gratitude with a word redolent of God throughout the day.
In the Eucharist we remember Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and we give thanks for them and for Christ’s abiding presence in our lives.
So as often as possible, I remember that the whole created universe is eucharistic. Any and all of creation reminds me of God’s omnipresent grace. All of creation can elicit my gratitude for God’s grace so lavishly given, if I only pay attention and remember it.
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From time to time, I reread Teilhard de Chardin’s Mass on the World to help me in the remembrance. He wrote it while doing paleontological excavations in the desert steppes of Inner Mongolia. He had no bread, no wine, no altar but he had his remembrance of God’s grace in and through all of creation around the world.
If you are still deprived of receiving communion in person, I pray that you may remember that God is giving Godself to you nonetheless, in the immediacy of your life, and in your experience of the created world.
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In this Easter Triduum, remember how God’s love encompassed the experience of Jesus and his disciples - betrayal, pain and horror included. God was not absent.
God is not absent from our own suffering, including the pain of missing the in-person Eucharist. God is an ever-present companion, feeling your pain, remembering Jesus’ pain and constantly working towards the victory of love.
This Maundy Thursday, we remember that Christ is the victory of love. Just as Jesus loved us, we should also love one another.
Amen.
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