A Catholic church is built around the sacrifice and the presence of Christ. On the altar, Christ’s body and blood are offered for our reconciliation. In the tabernacle, Christ’s Eucharistic body is kept for adoration and for the communion of the sick. The People of God, that is the Body of Christ, gathers together and forms an assembly at each celebration. Already during Jesus’ last supper with His disciples the body was very much at the centre of God’s action and presence.
First, there are the bodies of Jesus’ disciples. The Master relinquishes His seat of honour and the place of the one who presides over the meal. He adopts the attitude of a slave and begins to wash the feet of his disciples.
Our body needs care. We like to feel well. A good hygiene of the feet is part of our feeling of well-being. It is relaxing and comforting to have our feet cared for with kindness.
What a contrast between Jesus’ care for his disciples and the way His own body will be very soon treated! This is the contrast between kindness and violence, respect and contempt, care and violation.
Jesus’ body cares for his disciples’ bodies. He expresses and teaches in His body the beauty of being a human being and having a human body. He touches our bodies with human and divine kindness. He expresses and teaches love at its most elementary and, at the same time, most profound level. To love is to care for my brother’s, my sister’s body.
Then, there is, of course, Jesus’ body: “This is my body”. It is ‘for you’. It is given to us because it will be given for us on the Cross. It becomes our food because it will be sacrificed. It is totally offered, for us, in our stead, to the Father; and totally given to us, shared among us, by the Father. The Bread which the Father gives is the food of eternal life.
It can be given now, today, on the eve of Jesus’ Passion, because it will be offered up tomorrow; both things happen in the same movement. There is one gift, one offering, one love. The Bread of Life is Jesus’ body – that is to say, Jesus Himself, giving Himself and given for the life of the world, Jesus, priest and victim, inviting all His disciples to do the same:
‘You, too, give yourself; give your body.
You, too, present your body as a spiritual offering to the Father.
Join in Jesus’ sacrifice through the service and the ministry of His priests who represent Him and accomplish in the Church His one sacrifice.’
For there is One Body of Christ and we are this Body – with Him and in Him. All who partake of Christ’s Body become His Body. They partake in the one life of Jesus risen from the dead. The one and same grace gives life to our souls and unites them with Jesus. The same Spirit of life dwells in each of us and among us.
Our diversity is great, our gifts are varied, our vocations are many, but we all share in the same life and build up the one Body of Christ: the Church.
When Jesus orders, “Take and eat”, He invites us to His one life which is the life of His mystical body: the Church. The Church is made of many members, but it is the One Body of Christ.
The rule of life of this Body is love, and love begins with humbly caring for one another, humbly washing one another’s feet. Wherever Jesus is served in one of His sisters and brothers, then His Body is given out of love, then His Body is built up as the Church, then His death and His resurrection are announced to the glory of the Father. Amen.
Abbot Xavier