-The homily from passion Sunday/Palm Sunday is not available
-The readings for Easter Sunday are at USCCB.org >
-I will be preaching at holy Thursday evening mass at 7 PM and Easter Sunday mass at 9:30 AM downstairs and 11 AM mass upstairs
Holy Thursday
Are you up to celebrating Christian Passover? This question locates our reflections on Holy Thursday to what in fact Jesus was doing. It is clear that as a Jew, a rabbi, and a teacher that Jesus was celebrating the Jewish Passover meal with his disciples. However, it is also clear to the eyes of faith that he was transforming the experience of the Passover meal for his apostles. Jesus clearly was inviting his apostles and thus the church to experience a new Passover meal, a Passover meal with deeper significance: his saving death and resurrection. He was creating sacrament.
In considering sacrament, Eucharist, and the Last Supper,we must consider the Passover. Jesus had the attention of his Jewish brothers at the Passover meal. He knew that they were reflecting upon and celebrating in faith the liberation of God's people from slavery and death in Egypt by the "passing over" of the houses marked with the blood of the lamb. Thus, the function of the Passover ritual with unleavened bread and cup of blessing is the remembering the freedom from oppression and the new life with God (not the Re-dramatization of the Passover event) .
Jesus lays down on top of the passover in signs and words an anticipation of his saving death and resurrection which liberates the human family from the oppression of death and sin and ushers in the kingdom of God and eternal life in reconciliation with God. Onto the passover bread and cup he imposes and exposes the powerful presence of his own sacrificial life and love, his death and resurrection. He opens up and widens the window of the Passover bread and cup and turns them into access points for the church to be present to his saving grace. So the Eucharist is not simply the miracle of the Last Supper, it is not simply a dramatic and bloodless re-enactment of Calvary, but it is the sacramental sign and thus "access point" to the passing over from death without God to life with and in God through Jesus Christ. Paschal (of the lamb) Mystery!
Sacrament, then, becomes a passing over or passing through in which the believer is introduced into the life of God made accessible and the reality of God, Communion, is inserted into the life of the believer. That is liberating and saving grace. Communion!
Is that what we are doing here? I dont know. Are we simply re-enacting the Last Supper in order to get ahold of the Sacred and miaculous Body of Jesus Christ, the lamb who was slain? I think not. That would be to fall short of God's gift to all of us. What we are called to do in sacrament is to remember - to hear, touch, see, and taste the bread and wine of the new covenantv( now His Body and Blood) - Jesus' passing over from sin and death (which is the realm of this world) to life Eternal in the Kingdom of God - Salvation, Sacrament, grace, Communion.
And it is suppose to change us....every time! Woohoo. That's all I've got to say.
Easter Sunday
See Holy Thursday above. Not much else to say.
2 comments:
Writing with all love & respect, Father, "That's all I've got to say."???!!! Yeah, right, sure, lol, can't wait for Easter!!!
Love it, LOVE it, LOVE IT!!! Love this Word of God!!! LOVE that it's supposed to change us. And EVERY TIME, W-O-W!!! I can't think of any "wow" that's supposed to be a "wow" EVERY time! We look at the Grand Canyon...and we may marvel and say, "wow"...we look at a beautiful sunrise or sunset...we may say "wow". But the next time we're not as wowwed, we are dulled to the beauty. Odd. And I'm thinking we're not wowwed every time with Holy Communion cuz we're dulled. I either don't believe it enough. Or I'm not seeing. Or I'm not focused on Him.
Yet, woo-hoo, I'm thinking sometimes we know of a change, most however may be imperceptible in the moment??? Perhaps later it may be seen/known? WOW!!! Glory to God and Alle----!!!
I can see why Easter Sunday's homily reflection is "a repeat" of Holy Thursday's - and could be for all Sundays that lie ahead. And yet, as Fr. Estok preached at the Mass of the Lord's Supper last night, it can be a challenge to not let the Eucharistic Liturgy become "old" - as if I've seen it all before.
But it is not the "same old," because we all bring our changing lives into the "communion" each time. Our communion, our community, is never static - and through this "liberating and saving grace" we are always being made new again. As Matador describes, what an invitation I/we have to enter into (to "pass through") the mystery - because of God's amazing love, and this great gift of Sacrament - making us new every time.
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