Ampleforth Abbey

Introduction

Dear Friends, you are so very welcome to this celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper with which we begin the Paschal Triduum.  I would like to encourage you in these coming days to immerse yourselves in the liturgies which the Church has handed down from generation to generation.  These liturgies are very rich.  There is much that could be said by way of explanation and exhortation; but my homilies this year will be brief because I am confident that if we allow time to reflect upon the words we have heard, the Holy Spirit will bring to our attention what we need to hear, what we need to learn, so that we can continue to grow in fidelity to the Gospel of our Saviour Jesus Christ and become better disciples.

Homily

We have just listened to three readings which are connected with this night.  We have heard the account of God’s Covenant with his Chosen People, which commemorates the night that they were delivered out of the power of Pharaoh and began the journey to the Promised Land.  Next we heard St Paul’s account, which is generally accepted to be the earliest account, of the institution of the Eucharist which commemorates the Covenant made with God’s new Chosen People, that is to say ourselves, the men and women reborn in baptism who follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.  Then lastly we have a passage from the Gospel according to St John.  Why do we have this passage?  It comes, of course, from St John’s account of the Last Supper: but why does he recount this particular event in the Last Supper and not give us any account of the breaking of bread and the giving of the cup of the new covenant?

We cannot give a definitive answer to that question and so we may offer a variety of answers.  I wish to offer just one.  It is this:  Jesus hands over to us the sign of mutual service.  He wishes to tell us that all our love of God expressed in liturgical prayer, in personal prayer, in personal and communal asceticism, all this love of God is meaningless if our love does spill over into our willing service of our brothers and sisters in need of our help.  If we express our love of God in this way we follow in the footsteps of Jesus because Jesus expressed his love of his Father in his fidelity to his Father’s will even to the point of dying on the Cross so that humankind might be reconciled to God.

Please forgive me if I elaborate this point a little.  It is comparatively easy for us to assuage our consciences by placing a generous offering in the collection plate when we hear of some group of people in need, and this a good action but this is not what Jesus had in mind.  Whatever else we might do, Jesus wants us to offer our practical acts of service to those who are near at hand.  He wants us to involve ourselves in their need.  We begin with our own families.  We spread the net to those in need in our communities.  Little by little the love we celebrate in the Eucharist of the Lord Jesus spreads out from the worshipping community.  This is the way we fulfil Jesus’ command for he said: ‘I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.’  This is the way the words we will sing at the offering of the gifts, ‘where charity and love are found, there is God’, become a reality.  If we truly love God we must express it in the practical love of our neighbour.  If we do not love in this way we have failed to understand the Gospel we have been given, for love of the God we cannot see is intimately connected to love of our brothers and sisters in need.

Abbot Cuthbert Madden OSB