Holy Thursday

A reflection on the readings for April 21, 2011

 

            What was in the mind of Jesus the night before he died?  What was in the mind of Jesus when he gathered with his apostles for that first Holy Thursday meal?  Those are questions that were asked some years ago by a Jesuit, sacramental theologian by the name of Tad Guzie.  Among Guzie’s classics are The Book of Sacramental Basics and Jesus and the Eucharist.  In Jesus and the Eucharist, Guzie said that if we want to understand the Eucharist, we have to get into the mind of Jesus as a Jewish rabbi on the night before he died.  Only then can we understand the gift he gave us in the Eucharist, at that Last Supper.

Guzie said that too many Catholics have grown up understanding the Eucharist as a holy object or understanding the Eucharist magically; that is, the priest has the power to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus, a power not shared by other people.  Guzie, in Jesus and the Eucharist, said, to understand the Eucharist, we need to remember who else hosted a meal in which bread and wine were central.  It was the high priest and king, Melchizedek, sharing a meal of bread and wine with Abram, in Genesis 14, after Abram had been victorious in warfare against a king threatening God’s people.  Abram obviously later became Abraham.  After this, God made a covenant with Abram calling him to lead God’s people.  Guzie suggested that in choosing bread and wine for a meal, Jesus was indicating to his Jewish apostles that somehow the covenant with Abraham was being fulfilled and made new in and through Jesus.  Jesus chose bread and wine very deliberately. 

Also, Melchizedek was the king of Salem, meaning the king of peace.  Jesus was also probably making a parallelism with Melchizedek that He, Jesus, was the new king of peace.

Why did Jesus chose to eat a meal with his apostles?  Meals were central in the ministry of Jesus.  Jesus fed 5000 people through his multiplication of 5 loaves and 2 fish, a miracle that is reported in all 4 of the gospels.  There is another multiplication account in both Matthew and Mark, in which Jesus feeds 4000 people by multiplying  7 loaves and a few fish.

In Dining in Kingdom of God, Eugene LaVerdiere said the gospel of Luke is essentially about meals and the Eucharist.  LaVerdiere said that Luke’s gospel is made up of 10 meals in which Jesus dines.  In 10 meals, Jesus ate with different kinds of people.  In the first seven meals, Jesus ate with loved ones, like Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.   He also ate with people whose morality was doubtful, like Zacchaeus.  He ate with sinners as well as with self- righteous Pharisaical people.  Sometimes the meals were formal, and sometimes they were informal.  The first 7 meals led up to the 8th meal, which was the Last Supper.  In the previous 7 meals, Jesus played the role of preacher and teacher.  At the Last Supper, he was host and servant.  The Last Supper, in turn, led to the final 2 meals:  the first on the journey to Emmaus and finally with the disciples in Jerusalem.

The last two meals are decidedly Eucharistic in nature.   Jesus has risen and has become transformed into a new dimension of being.  He is at once with God in heaven, and He is really present in the breaking open of the Word and the sharing of the food.  In the last 2 meals, Laverdiere says that Jesus, the risen, transformed Lord. is also still really present to us. 

            Back to the question, “Why did Jesus choose a meal for his final night?”  It was through meals that ancient peoples experienced oneness with God and oneness with each other.  In the animal sacrifices of the Jewish people, first the animal would be burned with smoke arising to God, as the people sought forgiveness from sin.  Then the animal would be eaten, symbolizing feasting with God.  Jesus gave us the Eucharist so that we might feast with God.

            Why did Jesus use the words body and blood?  Guzie said it is a Jewish expression that refers to the very self.  Jesus, in his ministry and in his death the next day, gave himself, his very self, to people of all ages everywhere. 

Why did Jesus choose a Passover meal for the gift that he gave to us?  It all goes back to the notion of memory in Jewish culture.  When the Jewish people ate the Passover meal, they remembered the past event of Moses leading the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt to liberation and freedom and on to the Promised Land.  In remembering those past events, the Jewish people believed those past events became present again; and they became one with Moses and the people liberated from slavery in Egypt.  They entered into a holy communion with the mystery of the Exodus. 

Jesus, in effect, was announcing a new Passover.  The next day, by his death, and through his resurrection on the first Easter Sunday, Jesus led the human family from the bondage of sin and death to new life and eternal life.  When Jesus told his disciples and tells them today “Do this in remembrance of me”, he is encouraging us to engage in the Jewish dynamics of remembering and making present again saving, past realities.  When we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember and become one in the mystery of Jesus living, dying, and rising.  We become one with him, and we become one with each other in the mystery of living, dying and rising.

            Back to the issue of eating and drinking the bread and wine.  Ancient people became one with mystery by sharing a meal and taking the food that represented the mystery into themselves.  We become one with Jesus, we become one with each other, by consuming the bread and wine which we believe are his body and blood.

Saying the words body and blood separately was Jesus’ way of indicating his death would be violent, his body would be separated from his blood.   

            Tad Guzie called us to an informed, adult understanding of the Eucharist.  He called us away from objectifying the Eucharist, or viewing it magically to try to understand what Jesus was attempting to do in giving us this gift.  Guzie gave us a dynamic, process view of celebrating the Eucharist.

            On this Holy Thursday night, let us keep in mind what the synoptic gospels and Paul tell us that Jesus did at the Last Supper.  He took bread and said, “This is my body.”  He took a cup of wine and said, “This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant that will be shed, so that the sins of many will be forgiven.”  Jesus, in effect, after his cleansing of the temple, was abolishing the need for animal/temple sacrifices.  His total giving of himself, his revelation of Resurrection on the other side of death, all to be remembered and celebrated at the Eucharist, replaced the repeated sacrifices of the Jewish culture of the time.

Let us keep in mind also that John’s gospel does not have Jesus saying, “This is my body, this is my blood.”  Rather, after a multiplication of 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed 5000 people (again indicating that God wants to feed his hungry people), Jesus engages, in John’s Gospel, in the Bread of Life discourse.  He says in 6:35, “I am the Bread of Life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.”  He says in 6:51, “I am the Bread of Life, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  There is a very deliberate sacramental theology in those two verses from John 6.  In 6:35, we are told we are to come to Jesus in a personal, communal relationship.  This coming refers to conversion, conversion to Jesus and his way of life in the Reign of God.  6:51 indicates that we celebrate conversion, grow in conversion, nurture our conversion journey by eating the Bread of Life as individuals and as a community.  Unfortunately, Catholic culture historically has lost this connection between conversion and the celebration of sacraments.  As Guzie indicated, for so many people, sacraments have become holy things that we receive, rather than celebrations of and the nurturing of spiritual conversion and spiritual transformation.

John’s Eucharistic theology is continued in John 21 when Jesus mandates Peter to feed and tend his sheep three times.  In John’s gospel, disciples come to Jesus, eat the Eucharistic meal, and then go and tend to and feed a hungry world, in servant leadership. 

            As we get ready for the implementation of the new Roman Missal next Advent with a return to pre-Vatican II, Latin sounding language, let us keep in mind the vision of Vatican II and the Sacred Constitution on the Liturgy.  We were taught by Vatican II that Jesus is dynamically and really present: 1) in the consecrated bread and wine; 2) in the assembly of people gathered to celebrate and pray; 3) in the proclamation of God’s Word from scripture, broken open in the homily; and 4) in the presider who leads the assembly in prayer and worship. The real presence is a multi-layered experience in the vision of Vatican II. 

            In the late 1970s, Tad Guzie left the priesthood and the Jesuits to marry a woman with whom he had fallen in love, Noreen Monroe.  At their wedding celebration, they added an important symbolic gesture.  In front of the gathered community of family and friends, they washed each other’s feet, indicating certainly they were attracted to each other, had passion for each other, but more than anything else had a self-sacrificial love for each other.  They imitated what Jesus did at the Last Supper and what Jesus calls us to do with the people in our lives:  “….you call me teacher and Lord.  If I have washed your feet, so also you must wash each other’s feet… (John 13:12-15).” 

On June 24, 2001, Noreen Guzie washed Tad Guzie’s feet and anointed them with perfumed oil.  He died afterward of colon cancer.  He was 66.  In addition to all that Jesus did at the Last Supper, he called us to become servant leaders, to become leaders who serve.  Tad and Noreen Guzie lived that challenge from the beginning of their marriage until Tad’s death.  Let us, on this holy night, commit ourselves to the foot washing, servant leadership that Jesus calls his disciples to always engage in. 

 

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan