Maundy Thursday 2013

A new commandment I give you.

The first part of the new commandment is not new.

The first part of the new commandment is for people to love each other. This is the ethic of Moses and the instruction of the prophets.

The second part of the new commandment is new. It is also astonishing. And, it is impossible to fulfill apart from Christ.

The full commandment Jesus gives is: love one another as I have loved you. This kind of love is new. At, least it is new to the human race after we chose to separate from God.

Our first parents knew this kind of love. They knew it personally and even intimately as the pre incarnate Son walked with them in the Garden. They came to reject it. They chose power over love. In that choice they separated from love. And, because God is love they separated from God. They said no to love and no to God.

God did not take that “no” as our final answer. God worked with a single family, the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in order to build a community of faith. In that community  of faith God searched for one person who could choose to say yes from the depths of their soul. God found that person in Mary.

Through Mary’s “yes” God sent His “yes” to rescue us from separation. God the Father sent God the Holy Spirit to bring forth God the Son in the person of Jesus Christ.

The new commandment is self-defining in it very brief and very precise terms. Love each other as the Son of God has loved you.

If someone is thirsty- give them something to drink.

If someone is hungry- feed them.

Meet the physical needs of others and meet those needs in the context of the highest most perfect form of love: worship.

Jesus holds all people before the Father in prayer, in sacrifice, in self-offering and in sanctifying grace.

The new commandment sets a new standard in a new context. The new standard is universal unconditional love. The new context is the steadfast holy sacrificial love of Jesus present to us in the blessed sacrament of the altar.

The Mass not only reminds us of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, the Mass re presents this sacrifice. At the altar of Sacrifice we stand in the real presence of the  Infinite and Eternal Love who offers his own life for us and to us.

It is the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper that reminds us we live and more and have our being as a community of Faith in the Real Presence of Love.  It is the love that seeks the highest good for everyone. It is the love that lifts us into the community of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit- one God in three persons. It is the love that scandalizes the apostles by taking the job of a slave and washing their feet.

It is a love so centered in the Infinite and Eternal life of the Triune God that even in death he transforms death back into life. He gives that pattern and process of transformation to us. It is as we make a real choice to immerse our minds hearts and wills in the Real Presence of Divine Love that we discover within ourselves the new desire to fulfill the new commandment: love one another as Jesus has loved you.