HOMILY - HOLY THURSDAY
ST.ANTHONY OF PADUA CATHOLIC CHURCH
GREENVILLE, SC – APRIL 9, 2009

May our Lord Jesus, present in the Eucharist, high priest, give us peace.

It is the Passover of the Lord.  Way more than remembrance.  Feet.

It is the Passover of the Lord.  We all know the story, God’s people are spared as they mark the houses with the blood of the lamb.  Spared.  It is the pass-over of the Lord.  Through the blood of an innocent lamb God spares His people.  It is all coming together.  God through the innocent blood of His Son will spare His people – this time, big time.

It is the Passover of the Lord and all will be passed over.  God accepts His Son’s offering as a once for all deliverance, a cosmic gift, real generosity.
A return will be requested as God reveals the way in Jesus, a way that is…

Way more than remembrance.  What do you suppose the difference is between remembering something, and having the thing you are trying to remember with a partial brain, right in front of you?  Immense difference.
The difference is as huge as between a hand shake and making love.
How do we remember?  We stay in it.  We have never left this table.

It is like going from working for a boss you don’t even know to owning the company as a share-holder, like going from seeing and liking to being the thing you like.  It is like intimacy, ownership, unity and presence.
He is here.  We consume Him, become Him, are transformed by Him.
One of the most remarkable things that happens in the Eucharist is that we are not the same again.  Like becoming a parent there is one in being with us now.  Like God’s gift in the Eucharist we experience a likeness.  This is way more than remembrance, it is a becoming.  What was dismembered is now re-membered in you.  No oh yeah, is a yes still.

Feet.  Sensitive, covered often, damp or cracked dry, sometimes smelly, feet are pretty amazing.  Massage parlors make special treatments for feet.
In Jesus’ time feet were harshly treated.  Most people walked everywhere and in desert dust.  When you entered a house or temple foot washing was required.  You wash your own feet.

Now Jesus uses more than Passover meal, bread and wine, he uses feet to communicate the way of the Kingdom of God.  He will wash our feet.  In another place in the Gospel Jesus says He will put an apron on, and proceed to wait on us at table.  But this first.  Feet first.

The first time I had my feet washed by someone else it was my novice master.  Only the truly healthy and holy friars are given to the young as novice master.  There this very dignified and holy friar was washing my feet.  It was pretty freaky.  I’ll never forget it.  Now I get to experience a little of what it was like to serve you as he served me, as Jesus served His own.  Feet. 

What modern day experience could we equate with Jesus’ call to wash feet?  Nursing care, diaper changes, refuse collection, mopping, but be careful not to wander in service too far from touching another person.  Jesus could have said, “Here is the model, wash a toilet.”  But He didn’t.  Like the mud and spit in the blind man’s eye, the finger in the ear of the deaf man, the woman who washed Jesus’ feet and dried them with her hair, it is very related to touch this service Jesus calls for.

So go ahead, and hug, hold hands, kiss and give scalp scratches, heal with touch, humble yourself to groom another, to give them service like this.
Perhaps loneliness, depression, heartache will pass-over you.
Perhaps you too will be way more than remembered.
Perhaps people will put their feet where yours have been,
As we follow Him.