Holy Wednesday

 

In between cleaning all the guns that I don't have and watching scenes from Tombstone on continuous loop, I look forward to Maundy Thursday with it's double mandate, do this and love one another as I have loved you, the former realized in the Eucharist, was ever a command so obeyed?, and the latter signified by Christ washing the feet of his disciples.

The connection is clear and lies in the Cross, from which Jesus washes away our sins in his supreme act of love. And it's precisely this sacrifice that's made present to us in the Sacrament of the Altar. The extent to which we receive the grace offered, think Parable of the Sower, depends on our obedience to the commandment to love. 

Benedict XVI reflects:

In it (Confession), the Lord continually rewashes our dirty feet, and we are able to sit at table with Him.

But in this way, the word takes on yet another meaning, in which the Lord extends the "sacramentum" by making it the "exemplum," a gift, a service for our brother: "If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet" (John 13:14). We must wash each other's feet in the daily mutual service of love. But we must also wash our feet in the sense of constantly forgiving one another. The debt that the Lord has forgiven us is always infinitely greater than all of the debts that others could owe to us (cf. Mt. 18:21-35). It is to this that Holy Thursday exhorts us: not to allow rancor toward others to become, in its depths, a poisoning of the soul. It exhorts us to constantly purify our memory, forgiving one another from the heart, washing each other's feet, thus being able to join together in the banquet of God.

Holy Thursday is a day of gratitude and of joy for the great gift of love to the end that the Lord has given to us. We want to pray to the Lord at this time, so that gratitude and joy may become in us the power of loving together with his love. Amen.

Amen to that. We must and should hunger and thirst for righteousness, swords about the Cross. But by the same token, there is no place for the poisonous serpent of hatred within our hearts. It is the hallmark of our Adversary, Satan. And remember, though it seems counter-intuitive, the enemy's lost and lost hard.

Be on the side of Light,

LSP

Christ's Prayer In The Garden

Today we're looking forward to Maundy Thursday and with it the events of the Last Supper and beyond. Christ washes his disciples' feet, institutes the Eucharist, then goes to the Garden of Gethsemane where he prays before falling into the hands of sinful men.

Such mystery, and we tend to concentrate on the prophetic action of the foot washing and the sacrament of Jesus' body and blood. The one, of course, begets the other. As the disciples are cleansed by Christ and made fit for the Passover feast, so too are we cleansed by the blood of Calvary and participate in the heavenly banquet of the Eucharist. 

True enough and that's the least of it, but what of Gethsemane and Christ's prayer in the garden. Here's Benedict XVI:

Jesus says: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36). The natural will of the man Jesus recoils in fear before the enormity of the matter. He asks to be spared. Yet as the Son, he places this human will into the Father’s will: not I, but you. In this way he transformed the stance of Adam, the primordial human sin, and thus heals humanity. 

The stance of Adam was: not what you, O God, have desired; rather, I myself want to be a god. This pride is the real essence of sin. We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom. We need to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free. 

This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves against God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being and consequently do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to God.

This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. And what a perversion it is, the same tormented falsehood, for example, that tells Mothers they'll find meaning and fulfillment if they kill their children.

We know where this comes from, "He was a murderer from the beginning." We also know that Hell was broken on the hard wood of the Cross.

Have a blessed and holy Triduum,

LSP

Holy Week And Everything Else

All the teenagers of the world, led by the curiously named Hogg, descended on DC demanding the abolition of firearms. 

Julian Assange has had his internet cut off and the nations of what used to be called the free world are pounding cold war drums -- will they escalate? -- against Russia. And it's Holy Week.

The late great Fr. Crouse has this to say about Maundy Thursday, after first reminding us that friendship doesn't easily occur between unequals.

We are friends of God, because his grace makes us so. He makes us god-like, and grants us the equality of friends, the proportional equality of sons. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." (1 John 3.1)

That is the friendship which Christians call "charity," the very bond of peace and of all virtues. It is the friendship which binds us to God, and unites us to one another in the new commandment of love, "Fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." (Ephesians 2.19) And as friends, we must do as friends do: we delight in God's presence, we rejoice in our conversation with him, and find comfort in his consolations. As friends we care for all that is his. We seek to do his will as free men, not as slaves. "For we are in love," says St. Thomas, "and it is from love we act, not from servile fear."

Well said. You can read the whole thing here.

God bless,

LSP

Maundy Thursday

St. Thomas 5th Ave, Altar of Repose. Nice.

Some people think that the word Maundy comes from the Latin Mandatum, meaning commandment, or mandate. Perhaps it does and for a fact, Maundy Thursday sees Christ give several commandments, namely to "do this", instituting the Mass, and to "love one another as I have loved you." The faithful recall both this evening as they worship.

Well Done!

Some get it right.

Awesome

Others get it disastrously wrong, like the Episcopal cathedral in Cleveland. Maundy Thursday for them meant a kind of potluck Eucharist meal. According to their website:

Hideous Disaster

"On Maundy Thursday, April 5, we commemorate the Last Supper Jesus shared with his apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion on Good Friday. At 6 p.m., all are welcome to Cathedral Hall for a ritualized potluck meal. We will break bread together and share Eucharist as a community. Following the meal, members of the Trinity youth group will lead us into the Cathedral where if you like, you may participate in foot washing, walk the labyrinth and view the Stations of the Cross exhibit."

Make Yewkrist

Well that's just great.

Tracy Lind, see above, Trinity Cathedral's notoriously lesbian Dean, keeps applying to be a bishop in a bad case of "I desperately want to be something I don't believe in anyway." She keeps getting turned down, you can read all about it in the Virtueonline archive.

Deranged

Stay out of the labyrinth and have a blessed Triduum,

LSP

Maundy Thursday

Tonight we celebrate the Institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper and we watch before the Sacrament as Christ's disciples were asked to watch with Our Lord while he prayed in the garden before His betrayal by Judas. I like this short meditation and prayer by Marianne Dorman.

"On this most holy night, let give me sincere thankfulness for the Blessed Sacrament which fills me with Your life each day, and may I always come to the Altar prepared to receive Love, and take Love out into the world. 

As I watch with You during the silent hours of this night let Your sufferings and grief penetrate to my inner self, so I can share something of what You endured for me and all mankind, what Deitrich Bonhoeffer called ‘costly grace’. I adore You O Christ, and bless You, because by Your cross You have redeemed the world. Amen."

Being a mission priest, I had two Masses this evening, separated by a drive, which meant refueling the truck. By way of conversation I asked the cashier where he was from. "Nepal," he said and I replied, "Gurkha!" 

gurkha

At which he started running on the spot while making great chopping movements with his right hand, in imitation of his knife wielding countrymen.

We saluted each other smartly and went about our business. It's all going on in the countryside, I tell you.

Every blessing for the Triduum.

LSP