Mass of the Lord’s Supper Part 1 of Triduum 2022 April 14, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
[See part 2 here]
[See part 3 here]
What is freedom? What is authority? What is power? As we enter into the most sacred time of the year – the Paschal Triduum – I return to my custom of offering a prolonged reflection on a theme. Over these three homilies – today, tomorrow, and for Easter – we will, with God’s help, explore the meaning of freedom and authority.
And it starts right here with Jesus saying quite shamelessly “You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am.” He has washed their feet – something I will imitate in just a little while – and is using that to make a point about what being “master” means, but he does not cease being master and teacher.
After all, the meal they’ve just shared was possible only because his apostles dutifully obeyed him in making preparations. Simon Peter’s feet are clean only because Jesus insisted, leveraging his “inheritance” as something Peter would submit to. He had also told him that “What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.” And it is this that points us to what authority is for.
We hear authority and we think of power. Or perhaps of control. Inevitably, the idea of freedom finds its way into our thoughts. A person with authority seems to have more freedom to do what they wish. A person without authority seems to have their freedom limited.
“You will understand later.” That’s the key, the goal: to understand later. Those with authority have real power over the people under them, but what it’s for is to make them understand later. It is the father who disciplines his son not because he wants to make him a submissive slave, but in hopes of him becoming a virtuous man, a good man. A father knows much that his son does not. He is able to do what the son cannot. His commands should not be based on what he wants personally, but on what the son himself would want if he knew what the father knows, if he were as capable as the father is. The changing of diapers is good for the child, but beyond the child’s ability. The brushing of teeth good for him, but he is unwilling because he doesn’t understand. So he is made to do these things… The hope is he will understand later… he will be capable later. The need is a hundredfold for him to be led to virtue and a spiritual maturity.
Even still, there comes a point where a son is more capable and perhaps even more knowledgeable. There are places where those with authority – spiritual, political, economic – are actually less capable or less understanding than the people under them. What then? The need for reform, for justice, for accountability, yes. Yet, there is still this: human beings need to make sacrifices. It’s in our nature. From the very beginning of creation, human beings have sought to give of themselves to another. It is not until Adam sees Eve… until he sees another person capable of receiving his love that he even has a name for himself. Without love and self-gift, he is unfulfilled.
Love leads us to sacrifice. Time, money, effort spent on those we love. But there is one sacrifice that is best, that undergirds these others if they are genuine: the sacrifice of one’s own will. Obedience. Human beings without someone to obey are always unsatisfied. It’s part of the reason so many bizarre cultures spring up throughout history. It’s why people sometimes fall for the strangest cults and lies. We have an innate need to obey, to sacrifice our own will and freedom for the sake of something or someone we love. So even when authority is wielded by the less capable, they can offer something no one can offer to themselves: a place to obey, to sacrifice in the name of love.
What does this have to do with the washing of the feet? Everything! Jesus made his apostles celebrate the Passover. He made them go about preaching without money or even spare clothes. He makes his apostles accept the washing of the feet. Yet in every case, there was still their free choice to submit, to obey. And they did because, without a master to teach them, they would never develop the freedom to be apostles and missionaries. Without the chance to obey, to sacrifice their own desires, they would never have the freedom to love.
This is the heart of the priesthood, instituted on this night. This is the reason that priests have real authority. This is the reason we call them fathers and say leadership is service. Jesus is really serving his apostles by being master over them. The physical act of washing their feet does not undo the power we see when he forbids them from using swords to save him from the traitors in the garden. It does not deny the command to carry the cross. It does not erase the beatitudes, some of the most demanding orders a leader has ever given to his followers. It teaches us what authority is: a service. And just as a leader must not bully his followers, so followers must not bully their leaders with false ideas of service. That is just another worldly perversion of power.
This is why the Eucharist and the Priesthood are instituted on the same night and at the same time. The very word “priest” is defined as one who offers sacrifice. The Apostles are given authority, real power to bind and loose, but they are first given the mandate to offer themselves as a sacrifice, to make present the one, true sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. So it is that each act of power must point back to this moment.
Who was freer than Jesus Christ, the God-Man? Who had more authority than the one who created the universe? He can walk on water and raise the dead. He can do whatever he wishes. But in the height of his freedom and authority, “fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power,” what did he do? Wash his disciples feet.
Do you not see? It is so much more than a divine urge to have clean feet! Water and wind are the very first things described in the bible. Wind we will see later, but here is the Word, the creator who used water in the beginning using water now. For what? To wash, to cleanse. Cosmic power dwells in Jesus Christ for this purpose: to forgive sins. This is symbolic of confession and as Christ does for them, they in turn do for all who, like them, submit to an authority from God. In the end, there is no escaping authority and power, there is no escaping our need to obey. There is only the choice of which authority to follow and there is only one source of authority worthy of that choice. God.
So, if you would be free, then submit to him! Submit to receiving his love in forgiveness through confession, in worthy reception of communion. Be not like Judas who lies, who only pretends to submit long enough to get out of sight and do what he wants. Judas denies his own freedom in this, never even giving himself the chance to use that freedom for its purpose.
No, better that we are like Simon Peter. He complains, he grumbles, he questions and he is given answers that are incomplete “you will understand later.” He submits, but then denies his lord mere hours later – yet Jesus washed his feet anyway. And it works… had he still refused to submit or had he pretended like Judas, he’d never have returned and would never have the freedom to become the man we know him to be.
Would you be free? Then learn from Christ where freedom lay – in authority rightly understood. The authority to serve, to sacrifice. What is freedom, really? Ultimately, only one thing: the authority to love.
[See part 2 here.]