Homily for the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Dear brothers and sisters,
J.R.R. Tolkien once said, “It is the heroism of obedience and love not of pride and willfulness that is the most heroic and most moving.”[1] As we celebrate this evening the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Love, we encounter the most heroic act of obedience and love that could possibly be imagined.
We know “love cannot be imagined without sacrifice, and one cannot imagine love flourishing without friendship to nourish it.”[2] Love, sacrifice, and friendship, then, form the themes for our meditation as we consider what Jesus has done for us.
This understanding of sacrifice runs through each of the readings proclaimed for us. Together with the Psalmist, we have just prayed to God, saying, “To you I will offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Psalm 116:17). In the first reading, we heard of the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, by which the Hebrews were saved from that terrifying tenth plague (cf. Exodus 12:7). The blood of the lamb saved them from death.
When he reflected on the ancient sacrifices, Saint Augustine observed that “those sacrifices signified the things which we do for the purpose of drawing near to God, and inducing our neighbor to do the same.”[3] What is it that we do to draw near to God? It is precisely the sacrifice of thanksgiving we offer to the Father; it is what we heard in the second reading, namely the command of the Lord Jesus to “do this in remembrance of me” (I Corinthians 11:24, 25). In loving obedience, the Son God offers himself to the Father; we offer that same sacrifice to the Father, even as we seek to offer our lives in union with the sacrifice of Jesus.
Detail, The Last Supper, The Winchester Psalter, BL Cotton MS Nero C VI, f20r
In the Eucharistic celebration the Lord Jesus extends his self-offering even to us. At that Last Supper with his Apostles, the Messiah anticipated his own sacrifice to the Father when he changed bread and wine into his Body and Blood.
We have gathered in faithful obedience to what Christ Jesus instructed Saint Paul to do, and what the Apostle in turn instructs us to do (cf. I Corinthians 11:23).
The Eucharist and the Mass is the most sacred tradition in the world because what it ‘hands down’ (the literal meaning of tradition’) is nothing less than God incarnate, our only hope of salvation and eternal life and joy.[4]
We have gathered tonight to do what the Lord commanded us to do, so that the sacred power of his Paschal Blood might save us from sin and death. Indeed, “The Eucharist does not just memorialize Christ’s death and resurrection, although it does that. It breaks the barriers of time and space and makes each communicant a participant in those events; the Eucharist anchors time in eternity.”[5] Consequently, our sacrifice of thanksgiving is the very same sacrifice of love Jesus offers to the Father.
Jesus sacrificed himself for us because he loved us, because he loves us still (cf. John 13:1; 14:21; 15:9). Moreover, he offered his loving sacrifice for us because he has called us friends (cf. John 15:15). It is too often forgotten that “friendship is another school of sacrifice.”[6] We see this exemplified when the Lord Jesus humbled himself to wash the feet of the Twelve (cf. John 13:4-5). It is from this school of friendship that we must learn to make of ourselves a loving sacrifice to the Father and to one another.
The frequent reception of Holy Communion is the best way to take the interconnection between love, sacrifice, and friendship into both mind and heart. The Eucharist teaches a husband how to offer himself continually to his wife in his role as provider and protector. It teaches a wife how to offer herself continually to her husband in her role as nourisher and supporter. It teaches a priest how to offer himself continually to his parishioners in his role as shepherd. It teaches each member of a family how to offer themselves to each other in the daily relationship of family life. It teaches an employee how to offer himself in the task at hand. It teaches a student to offer herself in the assignment to be completed. It teaches us all how to imitate Jesus in every aspect and at every moment of our lives.
We bring our moments of self-sacrificial love to the altar to join them to the self-sacrificial love of the Son of God. It is he, the teacher and master, who calls us friends and inspires us with his heroic and obedient love of the Father (cf. John 13:13, 6:38; Philippians 2:8). We receive his sacrifice into ourselves so that we might do as he done, to love him and to love one another, and to do so “to the end” (cf. John 13:15; John 13:1).
The Eucharist teaches us how to imitate Christ Jesus and live self-sacrificial lives, the only way to true Christian heroism and sanctity. Just as Jesus offered the Eucharist on the altar of the Cross, so must our self-sacrificial love be offered “on the altar of our heart” so that it might be kindled by what Saint Augustine called the ignis amoris eius, the fire of his love.[7] If we remain in friendship with the Lord by doing what he has commanded and imitating the Sacrament of Love, if we offer our hearts as a sacrifice to be set aflame by the fire of his love, we will be “remolded in the image of permanent loveliness” (cf. John 15:14).[8] Amen.
[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” Essays and Studies 6 (1953): ___.
[2] Craig Bernthal, Tolkien’s Sacramental Vision: Discerning the Holy in Middle-earth (Kettering, Ohio: Second Spring, 2014), 257.
[3] Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God, X.5.
[4] Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Elk Grove Village, Illinois: Word on Fire, 2023), 261.
[5] Bernthal, Tolkien’s Sacramental Vision, 248.
[6] Ibid., 260.
[7] Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, X.3, 6.
[8] Ibid., X.6.
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