Bishop Earl Fernandes celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on April 2, Holy Thursday, at Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral.
The Mass begins the Easter Triduum, which continues through Easter Sunday, and is celebrated in remembrance of the Last Supper. The Church recalls Christ’s institution of the Eucharist: offering His Body and Blood, under the appearance of bread and wine, to the Twelve Apostles.
The Mass is also a memorial of Christ’s institution of the priesthood. The Apostles and their successors followed Christ in the priesthood, offering the Lord’s Body and Blood by celebrating the sacrament of the Eucharist.
During the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, after Communion, the Eucharist is carried in a procession around the church to a place of reposition. The Lord’s Body is reposed until Easter.
The following is Bishop Fernandes’ complete homily given on Holy Thursday:
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I welcome you to St. Joseph Cathedral as we begin the Sacred Triduum with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. The rubrics of the liturgy instruct the preacher to focus his attention on the priesthood and the Eucharist, which were instituted by Christ at the Last Supper.
The Gospel which we just heard, that of the Washing of the Feet, does not specifically mention the Eucharist or the priesthood, at least not in the way that St. Paul does in his letter to the Corinthians or in the way the Synoptic Gospels do. While I will omit the washing of the feet at this liturgy, I do so only because I carried out this ritual gesture earlier today at Madison Correctional and London Correctional, washing the feet of those incarcerated for their crimes.
We too were like prisoners sentenced to death for our sins and crimes, but God in His mercy sent His only Son into the world to redeem and save us – to bring us healing. Twenty years ago, in his homily for Holy Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI commented, saying that in this gesture of bending down to wash the feet of the disciples “God descends and becomes a slave. He washes our feet.” In this descent, he explained, is shown the whole mystery of Christ: redemption is not a mere exterior gesture but is a love that abases itself, purifies and makes man capable of being at table with God.
Two years later, Pope Benedict distinguished in the washing of the feet the sacramentum and the exemplum. The sacrament is, above all, a gift – the action of Christ that purifies. It then becomes a task, a model of life, a call to mutual forgiveness and to daily service. The washing of the feet is not merely a pious or devout scene, but it is a true synthesis of the priesthood of Christ. Christ, our High Priest, washes the feet of the Twelve, making them fit for offering worship and constitutes them as priests to follow His example, not only in humble service and the forgiving sins, but also in carrying out the sacrifice – Do this in memory of me – and following the implications of the sacrifice: I give you a new commandment: love one another.
Reflecting upon the prayers that the priest prays prior to Communion, one notices they are prayers for healing – making us fit for union with God and for our mission. The first reads:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
who, by the will of the Father
and the work of the Holy Spirit,
through your Death gave life to the world,
free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood,
from all my sins and from every evil;
keep me always faithful to your commandments,
and never let me be parted from you.
One could characterize this prayer as the prayer of Adam redeemed, who firmly resolves never again to hide in the bushes from God. Or, to phrase it another way, it is a way of crying out: “Heal me from the allurement of the dark.”
The second prayer is also that cries out for help and mercy:
May the receiving of your Body and Blood,
Lord Jesus Christ,
not bring me to judgment and condemnation,
but through your loving mercy
be for me protection in mind and body
and a healing remedy.
However, in Latin, the prayer would literally ask that the reception of Communion “may benefit me in such a way that I may be apt to receive healing.” Just like the paralytic who sat by the pool of Siloam, complaining that someone else always gets to the water first, and the Lord wanted him to desire healing and express it, so too this prayer is an expression of desire; to obtain healing, we must desire it and prioritize it.
Ignatius of Antioch, a first century Christian who was martyred in 108 and was a friend of Polycarp and a disciple of the Apostle John, spoke of the Eucharist as the “medicine of immortality.” Death is a sickness, and the Eucharist is the medicine that brings us healing unto eternal life.
Although we speak of the Eucharist in its reality as the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ or even as Holy Communion or the Sacred Host, we ought not to reduce the Eucharist to a thing or simply an object of devotion or adoration; rather, Ignatius of Antioch called it a pharmakon. Just as we might take some medicine or an antibiotic or a shot to kill some infection, in the Sacrament, we receive the person of Jesus Christ, the whole mystery of Christ, who is the agent of death’s destruction.
Some years ago, when I was in the seminary, I visited my eldest brother in Pittsburgh, where he worked as a pulmonologist. He had been treating a patient dying from emphysema. A phone call came through on a Sunday, and my brother took the call. He was and is a great doctor, but I remember him speaking to the wife of the dying man, and his voice cracked a little and he said, “I’ve done all that I know how to do. My suggestion is that you and your daughter spend time with your husband and tell him what he means to you and to thank him for everything. Just make him comfortable.” My brother put down the phone, and he looked at me, and said, “I’ve done all I can do. Maybe someday you can do more for him.”
The significance of the priestly vocation and the idea of bringing the medicine of immortality to others began to sink in. It is not just a question of being a doctor versus being a priest; rather, what my brother was getting at is that Eucharistic healing (and confession and anointing for that matter) is different from the healing that comes from medicine. Medical healing seeks to preserve or restore life. Eucharistic healing renews us spiritually but makes us capable of laying down our lives for others; it renews us for eternal life. Its object is to help us live properly here below and to live eternally with God above.
When the Lord washed the disciples’ feet, He brought them healing and made them fit to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice – to be priests. He made them capable of laying down their lives for their friends. He gave them a gift, and they, in turn, were to hand on what they received from Him, to use the terms of Saint Paul.
This laying down one’s life manifests itself in humble service of our neighbor. Last year, when I washed feet in the prison, a Spanish-speaking man said, “Bishop, when you washed my feet, for just a moment, I felt absolutely free.” It is amazing when you wash another’s feet and look up at the person how much he becomes aware of his own dignity – that he is lovable and loved by God. … and this is just one way to show our love for God and our neighbor.
Another way is through martyrdom. Yes, Eucharistic healing helps us to be willing to lay down our lives for Him and in witness to Him. Thus, the early Christians, like Ignatius, could face suffering and martyrdom with all boldness and courage, because they understood that their wounded humanity could only be fully restored or healed when their lives were offered as a holocaust to God. They could only experience true healing in communion with the Divine Master. The same remains true for us.
The Eucharist heals the soul and makes the person fit for heaven – for eternity. Yesterday, I had a funeral for a man at Mother of Sorrows Chapel at St. Joseph Cemetery. He had been incarcerated since 1979 for his heinous crimes. He had six siblings, but after his parents died, he had no contact with them, but in prison, he began to be converted. He changed his life and began to atone for his sins. He tried to serve as a sacristan for the Masses in prison, to lead Bible studies, and to be a friend to everyone. He frequented the sacraments regularly, and this brough him peace and enabled him to bring Christ to others within the prison. Last year, he was diagnosed with cancer.
I visited him at Marion Correctional in December when I offered Mass there, and he told me how grateful he was that the Diocese and the Knights of Malta helped him with his funeral plans. He was grateful that he was not alone – that he had a family in Christ and how in Holy Communion he felt that closeness to Christ and to everyone. I saw him about three weeks ago, and I brought him the last sacraments, and he had a smile on his face, and simply said, “Thank you.” His peaceful countenance was that of a man who knew the power of the medicine of immortality – to make us fit for eternal life.
In the Book of Revelation, there is much written about the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, who sits upon His throne, from which flows the river of the waters of life, which flow toward the ends of the earth. The river is surrounded by the shoots of the tree of life, which bears fruit and whose leaves are for the “healing of the nations.”
May our living and dying – through the gifts we receive – allow Christ’s healing power to spread to those places – those hearts and those regions of our world – that are infected or dead that they may experience the newness of life offered by Jesus, our Priest, the Bread of Life.