In the Good Friday Liturgy you will hear that, in his Letter to the Hebrews, the Apostle exhorts the Faithful to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works”.  And what the Apostle means by this, one commentator says, “is not universal charity but mutual love within the Christian community” (Hugh Montefiore, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Harper & Row, 1964), p. 175).  . . . And that sentiment characterizes the whole of Holy Week.  These seven days that extend from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday are not intended to school us in how to bestow Christ’s love upon a needy world.  Oh no.  These seven days are the Church’s time for introspection.  These seven days of Holy Week find us huddled together.  We are gathered as a family gathers in one place during a ferocious storm when the power goes out and all we have is candles.  . . . Holy Week is the Church’s time to be together.  . . . It is the Church’s time to be together for introspection, . . . solidarity, . . . taking stock of ourselves, . . . and for encouraging one another to mutual love and good works among ourselves.

    Today, Maundy Thursday, places two matters before us that are central to our common life as a Family in Christ.  Today, Maundy Thursday, invites us to call to mind:  the institution of a Sacrament . . . and how that Sacrament works.  And so, in Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, he writes,

the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

That is how the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist was instituted today, on Maundy Thursday.  The Lord Jesus took bread (giving thanks and breaking it) . . . and said, Saint Paul tells us; . . . Jesus said, “This bread is my Body.  Whenever you eat bread by taking it and giving thanks and breaking it, I am ‘in your anamnesis’ ”.  Saint Paul uses the Greek word anamnesis, which means not so much to remember Jesus as it means “to make present”.  So, Saint Paul tells us that the Lord Jesus took bread and said, “This bread is my Body.  Whenever you eat bread by taking it and giving thanks and breaking it, I am in your presence.”  . . . And then the Lord Jesus took the cup of wine as well (He took Elijah’s cup, the cup that no one drinks from at the Passover meal) . . . and He said, “This cup is a new covenant sanctified by my Blood.  The wine you drink with the bread you take and give thanks over and break makes me anamnesis -- makes me Present.”  And so, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist today so that whenever we share bread which has been taken and given thanks over and broken . . . and share wine with that bread in anamnesis of this night -- whenever we remember Jesus by taking Bread and giving thanks and breaking it as on the night he was betrayed, and taking the Cup as well -- . . . it brings us into the Living Presence of Jesus; . . . it brings us into the Living Presence of Jesus as “on the night when he was betrayed” with His spiritual family huddled around Him in anticipation of a ferocious storm.

    The effect of Christ’s Presence in the Sacrament was also explained by Jesus today.  Because “on the night when he was betrayed”

when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  . . . [And so, he] rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel.  Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.

We know from Peter’s reaction that what Jesus did was an outrageous thing.  Jesus couldn’t have outraged everyone more if He had stripped naked and danced on the table . . . or if He had allowed Himself to be stripped naked . . . and nailed to a Cross.  . . . To be in the Presence of Jesus, then, as “on the night when he was betrayed” is to be in the Presence of the Crucified, Living Jesus.  And on this day, Maundy Thursday, Christ showed us the effect of His Crucifixion and the effect of His Sacramental Presence.

    The effect of the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament is that it brings us into the Presence of God’s ineffable love.  You are loved.  You are so loved by God that He humbled Himself to become your humanity . . . and to wash away the soil of sin from your soul.  The Son of the Living God washes your feet.  . . . And then He wipes them.  Jesus reconciles you to God.  Not only does His Crucifixion wash away the soil of sin, . . . but Jesus redeems you; . . . Jesus restores the original unity you had with God, the Father Almighty, in Whose Image you are made.  Jesus restores you to unity with your heavenly Father, who loves you.  You stand before God with clean, dry feet.  Your sin is as if it has never been.  The Father does not see it (because the Son has healed it).  So, when you do as Jesus has instructed you today; . . . when you eat the Bread that is His Body and drink the Wine that is His Blood, . . . the effect these things have on your life is to forgive sin and to communicate the health of God’s touch.

    But there is more.  Because what does Jesus say after He completes His outrageous act of washing feet?

When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

You cannot truly benefit from the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament . . . unless you participate in Him.  You must surrender yourself to Him entirely.  You must surrender yourself to be conformed, by grace and by stages, . . . you must surrender yourself to be conformed to Christ:  . . . to become saturated with His Love for you; . . . which love enables humility (humility, you see, isn’t a matter of self-abasement; it’s a matter of extraordinary, self-forgetting love!) . . . by which self-forgetfulness -- by which humility -- we wash one another’s feet; we forgive just like Jesus forgives.  We wash one another’s feet . . . and we wipe them.  We not only forgive one another, but we are reconciled as well.  For, the Lord Jesus has given us an example . . . that we should do as He has done to us.  So, the full intent of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ is to accomplish three things. The intent of Jesus being Present in the Sacrament is to communicate forgiveness, to communicate divine health, and to make of us, His Church, a Sacrament(!) . . . so that you might communicate the Presence of Christ to me . . . and so that I might communicate His Presence to you.