Maundy Thursday 2025
Exodus 12:1-8,11-14 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15
Rabbi Jacob Yitzhak was one of the most famous early Hassidic masters. They called him the Seer of Lublin. He was quite a character, eccentric and charismatic, hugely popular among the Jews of the early 19th century Poland. He never kept any money on himself overnight, for example, but always gave whatever was left in his pockets to the poor before going to bed. And yet his many admirers kept making him generous donations. Once a famous wandering teacher of the Law, who felt rather underpaid, challenged him about that: “How is this possible”, he said, “I have been preaching here for days and got nothing, and all this came to you in an hour!” The Seer replied: “It is probably because each wakens in the hearts of men what he cherishes in his own heart: I, the hatred of money, and you the love of it”.
Lublin had a very learned chief rabbi named Azriel. He was jealous and kept pestering the rabbi Jacob with objections and reproaches. “How is it that so many flock to you? I am much more learned than you, yet they do not throng to me!” “I too am astonished that so many come to one as insignificant as myself, to hear God's word, instead of looking for it with you whose learning moves mountains”, replied the Seer. “Perhaps this is the reason: they come to me because I am astonished that they come, and they do not come to you, because you are astonished they they do not come!”
You get the idea. I couldn't resist telling these two anecdotes. The point I'm trying to make in this homily, however, is based on the next one. Here it goes: After the Rabbi Jacob's death, one of his disciples boasted that not only all of the Seer's Hasidim, but also about four hundred others, just loosely associated with him – they all had the gift of the holy spirit! One of those who heard the boast stood up and challenged it saying: “If such a holy community existed, why didn't you all join together in one great attempt to bring down salvation?” Believe it or not, he got a good answer from the boastful Hasid, who said: “When we were with our holy master, we were in a little sanctuary. We lacked nothing, and we did not feel the sadness of exile, nor the darkness that lies over all. Had we felt it, we should have shaken the worlds, we should have split the Heavens open to bring salvation closer”.
Well, something like that, only infinitely better, happened at the Last Supper. The disciples and their rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, finally alone together. It's a great feast day, everyone's there, they've got good food and wine, they are lacking nothing. The liturgy of Maundy Thursday captures the unique atmosphere beautifully, especially when it is celebrated by a monastic community. We seem to have entered an insulated bubble, tiny as far as space and time are concerned, less than two hours in church once a year, and yet surprisingly spacious on the inside, a little sanctuary. It's like something from a fairy tale: put your hand in your pocket and pull out a house with a garden. It happened once in history, and yet it happens every year on Maundy Thursday, and every day at Mass. It is possible because our rabbi, Jesus, “when he was about to hand himself over to death, entrusted to us the new eternal sacrifice, the banquet of his love, so that we may draw from it the fullness of charity and of life”, as today's Collect puts it. It helped somewhat that he was the true Messiah who did bring salvation, and that “he loved us to the end”.
Still, dive into the bubble and draw as much as you are capable of taking. Outside of it there is darkness, the horrors of Crucifixion, the tumult of the world, but all that makes the inside all the warmer and cosier. We have entered a concentrated fullness, you can almost cut the air with a knife. There is great joy here that belongs nowhere else. Of course, it will be validated by Easter, but it has a unique quality of its own. It's a timeless moment. By then, the devil had already swayed the heart of Judas Iscariot. Jesus knew that his hour had come, and that the Father had given all things into his hands. And he took all things into his hands, and pressed the pause button. Then he broke bread and he poured wine: this is my Body, this is my Blood, eternal life. After that he showed us what to do in this life with such great a gift. In his downward pilgrimage Jesus now goes below his own disciples, and as he goes down, he is giving everything away: the truth through his teaching, fullness of life and of love through his Body and Blood... Soon he will give us his own Mother, and finally the Holy Spirit of God with his last breath. But for now, let us enjoy His company while we can, let us rejoice in it.
DSP
Good Friday 2025
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Hebrews 4:14-16,5:7-9 John 18:1-19:42
“I thirst”, Our Lord said. And yet when “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, at once there came out blood and water”. He was thirsty, even though there was an abundance of water in him. He held it all in, ready to gush out. He kept nothing to himself. He gave away his Flesh and his Blood, he gave away his own Mother. Finally, he poured out his very life, like water. All that was left was a sunken Body, dry, devoid of all breath. And a great loneliness descended on the world.
And yet, since water and life gushed out of him, what did he thirst for? “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you 'I thirst', you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. This water would become in you a spring welling up to eternal life.” The Samaritan woman understood this saying, even if just instinctively: “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty again.” Give me this water! This is what Our Lord thirsts for. Ask Him for the water. Like that woman, you have be prepared to hear the truth about yourself and accept it. And you have to be prepared to accept the truth about Him. But that is all. You will hear Him say: I who am speaking to you, I am he!
Father Stephen Horton was once asked by a chance visitor to their monastery: what are you monks doing here all day? Slightly exasperated, he answered: we are guarding the void. It's a good answer. We are not Zen Buddhists though, why should we be guarding the void, you may ask? Because Our Lord Jesus Christ disappeared into it, that's why. Even though the void – death, meaningless suffering, loneliness – seems like the ultimate reality, it isn't. It does not have the last word. “I thirst” comes out of it in a low whisper. “I who speak to you, I am he!” The void masquerades a Presence. Presence so great, so wholly other than us, so wholly other than the rest of our universe, that we can't even detect it unless it chooses to reveal itself to us. The void is terrifying because of sin. In fact, it is experienced as a void because of sin. And so the temptation is to run away from it, or to try to fill it with feverish, restless activity, in an attempt for forget about its existence.
Let us not run away from this dead Body on the Cross, and let us not run away from the empty tomb when the time comes. Praise Our Lord Jesus Christ for going in there for us, and for taking our sins with Him. “Let the heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything that moves in them!”
DSP
Easter Vigil 2025, Year C
Seven Old Testament Readings Romans 6:3-11 Luke 24:1-12
In the short instruction at the very beginning of this liturgy, the Church told us quite precisely what we are doing here. We came together to watch, pray, listen, and celebrate the mysteries, that is the Eucharist. There followed a promise: if you spend this most sacred night thus, then you can have “the sure hope of sharing in Our Lord's triumph over death and of living with him in God”. How does one follow from the other? How is our doing all of these things tonight related to our salvation?
Imagine an obstacle completely beyond human capacity to overcome, like a mountain impossible to climb, yet one impossible to avoid on your life's journey. Countless had fallen. Then one Jesus of Nazareth attempted it and mysteriously survived what would have been instant annihilation for anyone else. This Jesus then came back to us, bringing amazing gifts from the other side and promising that he would see us through when our time came, that he would carry us safely on his back. We can't go there ourselves now, we can't even see or know how he did it. All we can do is to gather together at the beginning of the trail, that is, to sacramentally participate in his death on the cross, and to rejoice together in the fruits of what happened, in the gifts he keeps bringing us from the other side. That is why the Church is saying: watch, pray, listen and celebrate the liturgy. These are the appropriate things to do, while God accomplishes the greatest of his deeds for us – in a way, quite apart from us, frankly, in the darkness of this night. For us to be here, gathered to watch and pray, doesn't help him in any way. But if you are here tonight and not in bed, then it's a sign, an expression of your faith. And it is this faith that ensures a part in Christ's triumph. Hence you can base you hope of salvation on the fact that you are here.
So we have gathered here to listen to God's word, to hear the story of God's dealings with man. The story is long and complex, but it's essentially about a great conflict which has been taking place in the aftermath of the Fall. We were created for union with God, and in union with God, together with the angels above us and the rest of the universe below us. “Your Maker is your husband”, these astonishing words of the prophet Isaiah originally applied to all mankind, and through man to all of creation. But after the Fall boundaries had to be drawn and war had begun. And initially, with very few notable exceptions, the whole of the human race fell under the dominion of sin and the devil. We had been married to God, but we fell into an adulterous and abusive relationship with sin. We filed for a divorce from God to marry sin, because of its promise to make gods out of us.
The true God had every right to abandon us to it, to our freely-chosen new spouse and to the world of lies on which our new union was founded. But he didn't. He never acknowledged our second marriage as valid. It was slavery, not marriage. Through a series of interventions, he pulled some of us out. Then he established a covenant with a whole nation, with his Chosen People. He gave them the Law, a heart of stone, but a heart nevertheless, an organ for loving God. They resumed spousal relations, but Israel kept falling back into the arms of sin, into abusive affairs with idols and demons, which were worshipped without reserve by the rest of mankind. And so the Chosen People were caught up in the great struggle, between God's ardent love of them and his hatred of sin, so that they experienced God's love sometimes as tenderness and sometimes as burning wrath against that which stood between them. The marriage became very difficult for both sides.
And then God promised that he would do something new, that he would “sprinkle clean water” on his spouse, to make her clean again. And he did, he first made clean a virgin of Israel named Mary, in view of what was to follow. Because God at the same time also promised that he would “remove the heart of stone from our flesh and give us a heart of flesh”. And so Mary gave birth to God's only Son, Jesus Christ, who is our heart of flesh with which we can love God. And this Jesus did something unthinkable, he freely united himself to sin. He married it even though they had nothing in common with each other, in the name of us all. And then he died, making us a widow with regard to our illicit second marriage with sin, free again to marry God. Our sins followed him into the abyss like the Egyptians who “went in after” Moses and the people of Israel, “the waters returned and covered” them, of all the sins that followed Christ into the abyss, “not one of them remained”. There is no longer any real competition on the other side of death now. Instead of standing between us and God, death now stands between us and slavery to sin. What was the punishment for sin, became a marriage ceremony for all those who believe in Jesus.
That is why, as we heard in the Exultet earlier on: “This is the night, that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones”.
DSP
Easter Sunday Day Mass 2025
Acts 10:34.37-43 Colossians 3:1-4 John 20:1-9
“Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark” and she found it empty. So she ran and told Peter and John about it. They all came running back. Peter entered the tomb and then John “also went in, and he saw and believed”. Then the two men “went back to their homes”, but Mary Magdalene “stood weeping outside the tomb”.
Mary brackets the whole scene, as it were. John seems to have beaten her, and Peter, to faith. But then where was he, what was he doing when she was going to the tomb while it was still dark? And what was it that prompted her to go in the first place, if not some form of faith, or something better – love? “They have taken the Lord out of them tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him”, she complained. Would you go on calling someone who had been utterly humiliated and then killed “Lord” or “Kyrios”?
John believed, good for him! But what could he possibly do with his newly acquired faith except keep it for himself and enjoy it? He saw the empty tomb and everything fell into place in his head, great! But how can you pass on faith acquired in such a way, except maybe by conducting long and learned conversations, like the one between the mysterious Stranger and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, laboriously arguing and proving from the Scriptures? And didn't they get it only when the Stranger broke bread for them? The empty tomb is a great sign, but it's not the reality.
On the other hand, we know that Mary Magdalene was rewarded for seemingly failing to believe, to perceive the sign. She just refused to go home. Soon Thomas would also be rewarded for his stubborn refusal. All simplistic explanations fail us, because in the end, the Risen Lord appeared to every one of them: to Mary first, but then to John also. She beat him to it this time, but didn't he then write one of the Gospels? And the Lord appeared to hundreds of others. And they all touched him, and they saw him eating and drinking after his resurrection. What on earth is going on then?
Maybe we could say that, broadly speaking, there are two ways of coming to faith in the Risen Lord? There are those who begin with a kind of generic, almost philosophical faith in God, and then, in their striving to come closer to him, they come upon Jesus, his only begotten Son. And then there are others, who do it the other way around. They first fall in love with the man Jesus, and then are led to higher things by following closely and joyfully upon his footsteps? Maybe. More likely there are as many ways to the fullness of faith as there are people.
Be it as it may, both Mary and John, all of them, they belonged to a larger group of men and women who had followed Jesus of Nazareth and had seen all that he had done – before the authorities in Jerusalem “put him to death by hanging him on a tree”. He “went about doing good and healing all”, we read, and they witnessed it. But God raised him from the dead on the third day. And this same God “caused him to appear, not to all the people, but to them” precisely, so that they could spread the message, make others believe.
Two elements are essential then, it seems, if we want a living faith. To become true witnesses ready to lay down our lives for the Lord, we need to get to know him on either side of Good Friday. For us it means learning about Christ's life on earth from the Bible and through participating in the Liturgy, but then also personally meeting the Risen Lord. There are the Scriptures with their four canonical Gospels, there is the teaching of the Church, but there is also the Gospel of your life, the record of your encounters with Him, which shouldn't be left out. If you feel that this fifth Gospel, the story of you and Jesus, is a rather thin volume, or that you have largely forgotten what was in it, then stick around like Mary Magdalene. On their own, signs are not good enough. We need to stand by them, that's what they are for, and wait for the reality.
Dear brothers and sisters: Christ is truly risen! It's good that you are here. He will find you if you let him, if you give him time.
DSP