April 1, 2021: Holy Thursday B

April 1, 2021: Holy Thursday B

If you knew that you had just one day to be with a loved one before you died, how would you spend your remaining time? On the night before Jesus was handed over to be crucified, he spent the evening with his disciples sharing a Passover meal. For the previous three years, many of them had been his companions, following him wherever he went. Jesus saw the goodness in them and believed in them. He called them his friends and loved them to the very end even when he knew that they would abandon him and betray him. For the disciples, they were rightfully surprised if not mortified that the Lord knelt to wash their feet. Startled Peter protested. We have to wonder also what Judas was thinking when it was his turn to have his feet washed.

Perhaps we too would have reacted the same way as Peter. One priest reflected, “Deep down, we are resistant to letting ourselves be loved just the way we are with all of our grime, odor, and warts. We don’t want others to see our mess, and we can’t bear to let others think badly about us. We want to be in control of how we want to be loved.” We wrongfully believe that we have to try to fix ourselves before we can allow God into our lives. St. Therese of Lisieux wrote, “Jesus finds few hearts who surrender to him without reservation, who understand the real tenderness of his infinite love.” 

There were three gifts that Jesus left his disciples on the evening of the Holy Thursday. In a sense he left us three mode of his presence. Jesus left us his very self, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist. He instituted the priesthood that evening so that generations of priests would re-present the Lord’s Supper through the Holy Mass, make available Jesus in the Eucharist, and forgive sins in his name. Lastly, with the tender gesture of the washing of feet, Jesus gave us a new commandment to love one another as he loved us. He called us to service, “to wash one another’s feet,” so that by this love in action, others will see Christ acting through us.

I can’t think of a better example of a person who followed so closely the commandment to love one another than Mother Teresa. Through her love in action, she demonstrated for us how “to wash one another’s feet.” On the wall of Mother Teresa’s home for children in Calcutta, she hung the following poem for her sisters and volunteers to live their lives: 

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway. 

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and Jesus. It was never between you and them anyway.

To love our neighbors is not always an easy commandment to fulfill. It’s even difficult at times for priests to see goodness in others. One day I was asked by a woman to anoint her twin brother in his early 60’s who was dying of cancer. I was warned by the hospice staff that the man had been hostile and cursing the staff. The man fit the stereotype of ‘homeless’ perfectly--his face was gaunt, he was missing many teeth, and his hair was disheveled. As I began to listen to his story, it was not a story of a man who was brought up in poverty or in a broken family. On the contrary, he was raised in a good Catholic family, received a Catholic education, earned both Masters and PhD degrees, and had taught as a professor at a college. He said that he was married with three grown children, but that he was estranged from all of them because of his alcoholism. He knew that he had made some serious mistakes in his life where he put his career and other pursuits ahead of his family and God. I heard his sincere and heartfelt Confession, and I laid my hands on his forehead in silence and asked the Holy Spirit to transform his life. A month later while at the hospice to visit another parishioner, I enquired about him not knowing if he was still alive. I was told by the staff that an hour prior, his estranged children came to visit him. When I stopped in his room, I saw a changed man. He was clean shaven with a good haircut. I woke him up, gave him the Eucharist, and told him, "Now you are ready to meet Jesus with joy." Do we know what changed him? Was it the care he received, the love of his twin sister and his estranged children? Of course we know what changed him.  

Only Jesus can transform despair and suffering into peace and clarity. Only Jesus can give hope in the deepest pain. He is the life of the world. The more we come to know him--the more we come close to him--all the more we will love him. His love changes everything. There are many in the world, Christians among them, who have not yet experienced the love of Jesus. Their hearts are closed because of past hurts or sins in their lives. Jesus desires to reach them through us; we are to be apostles of his love. Jesus filled us with the Holy Spirit to respond and care for others, not on our strength, but through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Through the Eucharist, the Sacraments, and charity we open ourselves to be used as instruments of God’s love. 

As we spend this evening with Our Lord in adoration, we imagine ourselves in the Garden of Gethsemane praying with Jesus, pleading to our Heavenly Father that his children on earth will come to know the love that he has for them.