One With Those Who Suffer

Today the Church remembers the Last Supper of the Lord, and she prepares to embark with Him on the road to Calvary. As Saint John Paul II wrote in his 1991 Message for Lent, it is today that we should become more aware of the intense suffering that Christ experienced:

As Lent draws to its culmination on Holy Thursday, the Liturgy recalls the institution of the Eucharist, the memorial of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. This Sacrament, in which the Church celebrates the depth of her faith, should lead us to become ever more profoundly aware of the poverty, suffering and persecution which Christ endured.

Not only should we allow this awareness to develop into deep gratitude, but we should also allow it to draw us into deep solidarity with the suffering poor, for the “Son of God, who became poor out of love for us, became one with those who suffer.”

As we find our converted selves completely dependent upon God and His will for us, John Paul II challenges us to see the completely dependent Christ in the poor:

As we look at Jesus Christ, the Good Samaritan, we cannot forget that from the poverty of the manger to the total abandonment of the Cross, he chose to become one with the “least.” Christ teaches us detachment from riches, trust in God and readiness to share. He urges us to look at our brothers and sisters who are poor and suffering from the point of view of one who – in poverty – knows what it is to be totally dependent upon God and to stand in absolute need of him.

Perhaps an encounter with the poor today will help us all to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. John Paul II was able to do this during his last Lent on earth, for he found himself poor and suffering on death’s doorstep. He died ten years ago today, in fact, and so we ask him to pray for us all, that we may relieve Christ’s suffering in the poor.

Following Christ to the Cross

As we begin the Easter Triduum, remembering Our Lord and His ascent of Calvary, it might be difficult for us to discern how Jesus is asking us to follow Him to the Cross.

Pope Francis gave us some guidance on this yesterday, in his first General Audience address:

Living Holy Week means increasingly entering into God's logic, the logic of the Cross, which is not first of all that of pain and death, but of love and of self-giving that brings life. It means entering into the logic of the Gospel. Following, accompanying Christ, remaining with Him requires a "stepping outside.” Stepping outside of ourselves, of a tired and routine way of living the faith, of the temptation to withdraw into pre-established patterns that end up closing our horizon to the creative action of God. God stepped outside of Himself to come among us, He pitched His tent among us to bring the mercy of God that saves and gives hope. Even if we want to follow Him and stay with Him, we must not be content to remain in the enclosure of the ninety-nine sheep, we have to "step outside," to search for the lost sheep together with Him, the one furthest away. Remember well: stepping outside of ourselves, like Jesus, like God has stepped outside of Himself in Jesus and Jesus stepped outside of Himself for all of us.

Pope Francis, the prime example of someone who practices what he preaches, will “step outside” of himself today, when he celebrates Holy Thursday Mass in Rome’s juvenile prison. Blessed John Paul II did the same in his travels and in his very public struggle with sickness and old age.

How can we step outside of our computers, our homes, or our workplaces? How can we step outside of ourselves? Perhaps we can meditate on this as we gratefully remember the way Our Lord did it for us, in His Passion and His death. 

The Triduum Begins

Today we celebrate Holy Thursday, and we remember the beautiful moment when Jesus gave us the sustaining gift of Himself. We were given the Eucharist, the life of the Church. We were given a taste of Christ, a way to unite with Him in his suffering and death. Blessed John Paul II wrote of the Last Supper in his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia:

The Upper Room was where this most holy Sacrament was instituted. It is there that Christ took bread, broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying: “Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you” (cf. Mk 26:26; Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24). Then he took the cup of wine and said to them: “Take this, all of you and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all, so that sins may be forgiven” (cf. Mt 14:24; Lk 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25). I am grateful to the Lord Jesus for allowing me to repeat in that same place, in obedience to his command: “Do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19), the words which he spoke two thousand years ago.

Did the Apostles who took part in the Last Supper understand the meaning of the words spoken by Christ? Perhaps not. Those words would only be fully clear at the end of the Triduum sacrum, the time from Thursday evening to Sunday morning. Those days embrace the myste- rium paschale; they also embrace the mysterium eucharisticum.

The Church was born of the paschal mystery. For this very reason the Eucharist, which is in an outstanding way the sacrament of the paschal mystery, stands at the centre of the Church's life. This is already clear from the earliest images of the Church found in the Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:42). The “breaking of the bread” refers to the Eucharist. Two thousand years later, we continue to relive that primordial image of the Church. At every celebration of the Eucharist, we are spiritually brought back to the paschal Triduum: to the events of the evening of Holy Thursday, to the Last Supper and to what followed it.

Let us draw life from the Eucharist this Holy Thursday, and remember Christ as he prepares for his passion and death.