“Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. … Fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments.”

          To perpetuate the Memorial He establishes on this great and holy night, the mystery of His real presence in the Holy Eucharist, Christ tells His Apostles to “do this in memory of me,” ordaining them as His first priests. Thus, the Church celebrates tonight the institution of two sacraments inextricably tied: the Eucharist and the Sacred Priesthood. The Eucharist cannot exist without the priest to make present Christ at the head of His people, and the priest cannot exist in the person of Christ unless he lives from and towards the reason for his existence: making God present in the mystery of the altar.

          St. John emphasizes that the Lord not only knows what is happening around him, but is completely in control of it all. At the Last Supper, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.” “fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power,” and in the garden tonight, “Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him, [will confront His accusers and say] to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’”

          Feeling the full weight of all that would come to pass, of the most monumentous events of human history, He emphasizes, of all things, friendship. Twenty per cent of John’s Gospel takes place at the Last Supper, as he records the final instructions of Christ to His Apostles, and prays for them to His Father.

          “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. … This I command you, to love one another.”

          What does it mean to be a friend of Christ, especially for His priests? The priest is a man crucified, because he is conformed to Christ, the victim priest who offers the sacrifice of Himself. On Sunday, we will hear the angel say to the women, “I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified.” Not just, the one who was crucified, but who is always the Crucified. But that conformity to the Crucified always takes place in a deep friendship that sustains a life of sacrifice, just as the Last Supper, as an anticipation of Calvary, transforms the Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross into a gift of love. In the upper room and at Calvary, the Lord’s two “this is my bodys” resound in one chorus. So, in the life of the priest, Christ’s love that He experiences in a unique way in the Eucharist transforms his own life of sacrifice.

          “No longer do I call you servants,” He tells His first priests, “for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” At the ordination of priests, this line is rendered in Latin as, “for you have understood everything that I have done in your midst.”

That verse has always perplexed me, because they don’t seem to understand at all. On Palm Sunday, we saw how the leaders of the Jews remembered the prophecy of the Resurrection and asked Pilate for a guard for the tomb. But the Apostles not only do not understand the Lord’s actions tonight; in three days will be completely surprised when He comes back to them victorious!

The Lord seems to recognize that they don’t understand: “Do you realize what I have done for you?” So what is the Lord trying to show us here? Real understanding of what the Lord has done in their midst, of what He has heard from His Father, is not logical proof or deduction. It is immersion in the mystery of Christ. The Church sings these seemingly presumptuous words, “you have understood all that I have done in your midst,” as the newly ordained priest receives the fraternal embrace of His bishop, his new father in Christ, because he has been immersed in this mystery, and that is the source of real understanding.

          The priest’s joy is to see the Lord at work through the work of his own hands, and in the hearts of those who seek Him. Immersed in the mystery of Christ, he has that deeper understanding of what Christ is doing in his midst. But he also has the most intimate view of the betrayal that happens on this night, and every time that those beloved by the Lord turn their back on him. But even in sin and betrayal, the priest sees God at work in a way no one else can. He sees that the greatest victories are the hardest fought, when perhaps he alone knows the struggles that his spiritual children face, when he alone is afforded the great privilege of knowing the secrets of their hearts, when he alone has the chance of giving hope to penitents, encouraging them not to give up hope, trusting that God is at work, and that victory over sin is not only possible, but never as far off as the enemy of our salvation would have us think. It is given to the priest to understand what God is doing in his midst.

The priesthood and the Eucharist are inseparable because the priest shows us what it means to live the gift and mystery of the Eucharist. By his life consecrated to the Lord, through his dedication to priestly service, through the consecration of his body in imitation of the Lord’s own celibacy, saying “this is my body” with the Lord in the gift of his celibate chastity, he shows us what that real understanding as immersion in the mystery is really like.

Brothers and sisters, pray for more priests! Pray for more priests not because we are overworked or spread thin, but because the priesthood is the whole Church’s immersion into that mystery, of Christ’s love present in the Eucharist, and thus through the priesthood, Christ breaks into the world. This is why St. John Vianney could say that the priesthood is the love of the heart of Christ. Pray for more priests because the world is starving for love.

In His last words at the Last Supper, after which St. John’s Gospel will resume tomorrow with the Passion Christ prays to the Father: “I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” This is the end of the priesthood, as the most intense form of friendship with Christ, that the love with which the Father loves the Son may be in them.

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word.” Pray for those whom the Lord is calling, that they will open their hearts to this love, and be inflamed with desire to lay down their lives to obtain and share with the world the love greater than which no man knows, the love of the man who lays down His life for His friends.

Tonight we begin His Sacred Paschal Triduum. In three days, at the end of all our journeying, we will arrive back where we began and know the place for the first time. Immersed in the mystery of Christ, we too will be his friends, as we see and understand what He has done in our midst.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

Maundy Thursday, A.D. MMXXVI