A Homily for the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper

+ Sine Domenico, non possumus, the martyrs of Abitane declared in the year 304 under the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian: without the Sunday Eucharist, we cannot exist.

The witness of these forty-nine North Africans is a most apposite one to recall on this feast of the institution of the Most Blessed Eucharist by Our Lord at the Last Supper, and indeed of His institution of the Sacred Priesthood so as to ensure that His flock, His Church, could be fed upon the Blessed Eucharist in the ages to come. For without the Eucharist, and without the Sacred Priesthood, Christians cannot exist, for Christianity is not about doing good or about being nice, or even about regarding Jesus of Nazareth as a great teacher. It is not even about washing others’ feet as the Holy Gospel of this Mass seems to suggest.

No. Christianity—undiluted, unedited, original, full-strength Christianity, found with certainty only in the Catholic Church (in spite of those within her who would undermine the very foundations of its life and teaching) is primarily about the worship of Jesus Christ as God and of eating His Body and drinking His Blood in the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist which is, as St Thomas Aquinas so succinctly teaches us in the Magnificat antiphon of the feast of Corpus Christi is, at the same time the making present of His Passion and Death on the Cross, the filling of our souls with the grace and power this Sacrifice won for us and a promise and foretaste of the future glory that is to be ours. Everything else flows from our communion with Christ in the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist—a communion that is so intimate and powerful that, as St Paul teaches us with his habitual clarity in the Epistle, we must never, ever approach the Blessed Eucharist unworthily.

Rightly, then, did the martyrs of Abitane refuse to abandon their celebration of the Eucharist and go instead to a martyr's death, for without access to the living Christ whose sacrifice for us is made present and given to us anew in each and every celebration of Holy Mass, there was is further reason to live on this earth.

This evening I am offering this Holy Mass in thanksgiving for the gift of the Sacred Priesthood that our monastery has received twice in the past two years—for it is a fact that, so too, without the Blessed Eucharist even (especially!) monasteries cannot live. Almighty God, in His Providence has given a permanent, beating heart to our community: the daily celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (even if the circumstances of this gift were, out of necessity, other than we would have wished).

So too I am offering this Mass for vocations to the monastic life and to the priesthood lived in the monastery—that Our Lord will call young men to prefer nothing to the Work of God (Rule of St Benedict, ch. 43) and that they will have the grace to respond and to take up the “strong and glorious weapons of obedience” and “run with unspeakable sweetness of love in the way of God’s commandments,” (Rule, Prologue) living daily from the worthy and beautiful celebration of the whole of the Sacred Liturgy in all its traditional richness, of which the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is nothing other than the radiant centre.

I am also offering this Mass, on this day when traditionally priests gather around their bishop in his Cathedral for the blessing and consecration of the Holy Oils, for the two bishops who serve our diocese, that they may be ever faithful and courageous stewards and teachers of the Catholic Faith that comes to us from the Apostles. Of course, they are prayed for in every Mass celebrated in this monastery, as is the Holy Father. But on this great feast of the very sacrament of Communion, it behoves us to underline that reality (particularly given that the necessities of recent years have led some to jump to the absurd and ignorant conclusion that such communion no longer exists).

In monastic tradition, in imitation of Our Lord on Maundy Thursday, the Abbot washes the feet of his monks in the Chapter room. In the great Abbey of Cluny, renowned for the quality of its liturgical worship, this was also the day on which the monks received new shoes. Their old ones were given to the (very grateful) poor, together with alms and a good meal. Christianity does wash others’ feet; it does attend to their needs, and it does make people better, even ‘nicer’! But it does so from the basis of worshipping Jesus Christ as God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and of worthily receiving His Body and His Blood truly present under appearances of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist in Holy Communion. From this intimate encounter all of Christian life flows.

This evening, as we celebrate this wondrous gift, let us give thanks that we are able to celebrate this great Sacrament, here, at this alar. Let us pray that others shall come forward to offer themselves in its humble service so that future generations shall also be able so to do. And let us pray for our Chief Shepherd and for his Coadjutor, that they may ever respect and protect us in so doing, for without the Blessed Eucharist, we cannot live. +