“A new commandment
I give unto you, that ye love one another;
as I have loved
you, that ye also love one another.”
“He carried himself in his own
hands”. In such a
phrase, St. Augustine captures the paradox and the poignancy of the passion
of Christ on this night, this very night.
“He carried himself in his own
hands” who is
delivered into the hands of his betrayers on this night, this very night.
“He carried himself in his own
hands” who is
delivered into the hands of his enemies on this night, this very night.
“He carried himself in his own
hands” who is
delivered into our hands on this night, this very night.
For we are his betrayers; we are
his enemies and yet, that “he carried himself in his own hands”
signifies something more than our betrayals and our enmities against God. It
signifies the love that underlies the passion of Christ, the inner spring of
the will that undergoes the passion of Christ, making provision for us out
of our wills in disarray, out of our hearts of betrayal, out of our hands of
cruelty and hate, the hands of sinful men and women, my hands and yours.
“A new commandment I give unto
you”, Christ says,
even as “he carrie[s] himself in his own hands”. For what he speaks
that he also does. The effective signs and tokens of his love are given to
us in the sacrament of his body and blood. In anticipation of his passion,
death and resurrection, he institutes this holy means of the true and
abiding presence of God with us. Such, we may say, is the mystery of the
Holy Eucharist by which we participate in the mystery of his passion and
enter into the meaning of its purpose for us in our lives.
The “new commandment” (the
“novum mandatum” hence “Maundy Thursday”) is “to love one
another even as he has loved us”. How has he loved us on this night,
this very night? His passion shows us that love even as it shows us on this
night, this very night, the means of our continuing in his love for us.
“He carrie[s] himself in his own hands” who is betrayed into the hands
of sinful men. And yet, on this night, this very night, he identifies
himself with us through the bread and wine, the signs and tokens of his body
broken and blood out-poured, the signs of the very reality of his passion
which is nothing less than the reality of his love for us.
See how he loves us! “He
carried himself in his own hands” and places himself in our hands. They
are at once our hands of betrayal and our hands of grateful receiving;
receiving him that his love and grace may be received in us.
Maundy Thursday reveals the
poignancy and the paradox of the passion. Christ is betrayed, condemned,
sentenced, scourged, mocked and crucified. He is acted upon and yet he acts. His love moves within all the actions that our hands visit upon him. His
sacrifice and his service are about his love for us in his love for the
Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit, a love that extends eternally and
embraces the world in hands outstretched and nailed to the cross.
That active love, at once hidden
and unseen, shows itself to us ever so poignantly and yet ever so powerfully
when, on this night, this very night, “he carried himself in his own
hands” for us and for our salvation.
He commands us to love who
commands us to take, eat, and drink of his body broken and his blood
out-poured. He provides us with the sacrament of his love on this night,
this very night in which he was betrayed.
Behold our hands of betrayal. But, even more, behold his hands of love.
“A new commandment
I give unto you, that ye love one another;
as I have loved
you, that ye also love one another.”
