Mass of the Lord’s Supper – 17 April 2025
A former parishioner of mine, recounted to me how, many years ago, she went to Mass at her local parish. It was a weekday Mass, and the priest asked for a Eucharistic Minister to assist him. And so Rachel stood up and came forward. “The Body of Christ . . . Amen . . . the Body of Christ . . . Amen.” Person after person came forward and the repetition of her statement and prayer somehow began to sink into her bones. The last person came up and with something of an exuberant glee exclaimed in a loud voice – but more than loud – a joyous voice., “Amen!”
Straight after Mass, Rachel went to have breakfast with a friend who was sick with cancer. They sat in the café, and they shared life. They talked about their faith and so on. A man who lived on the streets came in and sat down at a nearby table. He was scruffy and odorous – not the sort of person one really wants to sit near. He had bought a small coffee and Rachel and her friend had an apricot tart. She doesn’t know why she did it, but Rachel cut the tart into three and stood up an offered the man a piece to go with his coffee. Someone else made a joke of it, and said, “can I have some too?” Instantly, and without even thinking about it, the man cut the tart into pieces and handed it to the others in the café. Rachel recounted, “within minutes, through a simple gesture of sharing an apricot tart we all belonged, we were all laughing and sharing in something deeply sacred.” Rachel shared that she has never forgotten the encounter, though it happened many years ago. Here was a man who came in as despised and rejected, with whom nobody wanted to talk or with whom to be associated. But in the breaking of an apricot tart, in the taking and sharing, he became one of them. And not just one – he became the presence of Christ in their midst. Eucharist. The Body of Christ.
Beatrice Bruteau describes this as the “Holy Thursday Revolution.”[1] In this final meal with his disciples, Jesus says to those gathered with him
“We are friends, all equal. Everything I have done you can do as well. . . Sharing my life with you has been my love for you . . . Do you see how it is? That a friend’s life lives inside you? And you live in your friend? It’s that kind of love. . .
Let me show you another sign to make this clear. Here is bread. . . If I break it, so, and give it to you . . . it will become you. What was my body will by your body. Do you see? My life is given to nourish your life, to make you live more fully.
Let us do it with the wine too. . . It is a single cup; share it among you. It is a common life among us all. Now you must do the same . . . You also share your lives with one another, feed each other with your very bodies and souls, lay down your lives for each other, dwell in one another.”[2]
Jesus is saying to us, “As I am ready to be servant to you, be servants of one another. As I am ready to be food for you, be food for one another. In this way, and only in this way, will the world really begin to change.” It is for this reason, that the Eucharist and the memory of Jesus’ washing of his friends’ feet go hand in hand. We can never have one without the other. The washing of his friends’ feet brings us to the core of the Eucharistic mystery in a way that brings it into an imperative. As Rachel shared with me so accurately, “What does it mean for me to pray the words, “This is my body and blood, take and eat and drink . . . I have often been struck by two little words: “do this.” On what word do we put the emphasis. What is the ‘this’ that we are told to ‘do’?” The Eucharist is therefore something we live. And we live it in as simple a place as a café after a weekday Mass.
[1] See Beatrice Bruteau, The Holy Thursday Revolution,” (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2005).
[2] Bruteau, The Holy Thursday Revolution, 59-60.
