In contemporary Western society, which is very media-driven, we use language in a fairly profligate way. Profligate, you might ask? Profligate means to use recklessly or wastefully. This is exacerbated by the widespread use of social media, which, of course, has its good and bad aspects. One example of this profligacy is the widespread use of the word “apocalypse” and its variants during this time of pandemic.
What “apocalypse” is usually taken to mean in this context is something like “the end of the world.” But we have another perfectly good big word we can use to refer to the end times: eschatological. The word “apocalypse” likely became associated with the end of time by being the name of the last book of the Bible. Even today in some English language translations, instead of “Revelation,” the last book of the Bible is sometimes given the title “Apocalypse.”
As the association indicates, an “apocalypse” is a revelation. Apocalypse means to unveil something previously concealed. In our Gospel this evening, we are faced with a very good example of an apocalypse. Jesus is unveiled as Lord by washing the feet of his disciples (in Saint John’s Gospel there are no apostles, only disciples). As Peter’s vehement response indicates, washing feet is the job of the lowliest of the low. But the “form of God,” according to the Scriptures, is that of a slave.1
Rather than as set forth by the fevered imaginations of those who inhabit an overstimulated society, Jesus’s Lordship is revealed in ways that go unnoticed by most people most of the time. Even among those who notice, his unveilings are usually underappreciated if not overlooked entirely. The latter is indicative of the attitude, “Is that all?”
Let us examine the Eucharist as an apocalypse, an unveiling, of Jesus as Lord. It is not intuitively obvious to the casual observer that at the words of consecration the bread and wine, by the Holy Spirit’s power, are “transubstantiated” into Christ’s body and blood. There is no physical change in either substance, even at the sub-atomic level. To believe otherwise is to adhere to “physicalism,” which the Church teaches is an inadequate and inaccurate way of understanding the transformation in which we believe.
Jesus Washing the Feet of the Apostles, by Giovanni Stefano Danedi, ca. 1600-1700
What, then, is the “proof” that the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood? Again, our Gospel for the beginning of the Sacred Triduum provides us a ready-to-hand one. Before setting out the proof, which is quite obvious, it bears noting that in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’s washing his disciples’ feet serves as the “institution narrative.” In other words, unlike the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Mark, Matthew, and Luke), in John Jesus does not take bread, bless and break it, and then bless wine giving it to them and saying: “This is my body. This is my blood.”2
The evidence that the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood is that it makes those who partake of it his very Body. It is the life of Christ’s Body, which is lived in service, that is, diakonia, that provides convincing evidence to the world. This is summed up beautifully by the opening words of a traditional hymn, usually sung on Holy Thursday: Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est (“Where charity [and love are], God is present there”).3
The take-away this evening should be as obvious as the proof: serve others selflessly. Not only during times of extreme crisis, like the one we’re experiencing now, but all the time, there are people who need your help. In Christian parlance, this is called love of neighbor. The point of Jesus’s Parable of the Good Samaritan is relevant here: “Turn yourself into a neighbor.”4
“There is no need to speculate about who your neighbor is,” Tomáš Halik insists.5 “By overcoming your selfishness,” Halik continues, “by being close to people- particularly in their need- you can turn people into your neighbors…”6 This, too, is an apocalypse, an unveiling, something the does not and cannot happen by means of apologetics.
Tomorrow, on Good Friday, we will commemorate and, dare I say, celebrate the ultimate unveiling of Jesus as Lord and God: his crucifixion. You might object: “Wait a minute! What about his resurrection?!” But in the calculus of our redemption, there can be no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. As Friedrich Nietzsche observed: “only where there are tombs are there resurrections.”7
My dear friends, Jesus is our Passover. “Through him, and with him, and in him,” we pass from death to life.8 Let us resolve to live the new life we received when we emerged from the waters of baptism, the life which is sustained by the Eucharist for which we now hunger and thirst more than ever. Living this new life means serving others in Jesus’s name for the sake of God’s kingdom. “Where charity [and love are], God is present there.”9
1 Philippians 2:5-7.↩
2 Matthew 26:26-30; Mark 14:22-26; Luke 22:14-20.↩
3 Roman Missal, “Thursday of the Lord’s Supper,” sec. 14.↩
4 Tomáš Halík, Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing In Us, trans. Gerald Turner, 99.↩
5 Ibid.↩
6 Ibid.↩
7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, XXXIII, “The Grave Song,” trans. Thomas Common.↩
8 Roman Missal, “The Order of Mass,” Eucharistic Prayer III, sec. 114↩
9 Ibid., “Thursday of the Lord’s Supper,” sec. 14.↩
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