Holy Thursday – Part I of the Triduum: A New Love

Mass of the Lord’s Supper                                                                              March 28, 2024
Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

“Love one another as I have loved you.” We call it the new commandment because that’s what Jesus called it. Like the word “gospel,” however, we’ve heard it so much that it does not strike us as news in any way. It’s old hat, familiar territory, memorized and forgotten, hear the first few words and tune out…

But we don’t know it like we think we do. Anyone who thinks the gospel isn’t news isn’t really listening. Anyone who thinks this commandment isn’t new doesn’t know what love is. So that will be our theme this Triduum: love. Today, tomorrow, and for Easter, we’ll dive more deeply into the this poor, abused, overused, neglected word: love.

“Do you realize what I have done for you?” Jesus asks. The half-consciously-nod-along answer is “you washed our feet.” That’s true, but it’s not enough to get the facts straight. There’s more to this. Jesus tells the apostles, tells us, “if I, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

What did Jesus do that we should “also do?” From parish priest on up to the pope, apostles all around the world are literally washing feet tonight. Yet, simply washing feet is too limited an answer. It is a sign of a deeper reality, what we call a sacramental. Like the seven sacraments, like all sacramentals, the external reality points us to something deeper.

The deeper reality is the real content of Jesus’ command. Love each other as I love you. Washing feet makes the love real, tangible, present. Simply telling them he loved them would not work, but neither can love be reduced to the mere act of washing feet. The common interpretation of this is that we should love the poor, that we should care for those in need, that we should be kind, that we should love and serve even our enemies. After all, Jesus washed even Judas’ feet.

And this is not wrong! If we neglect the poor, we risk damnation. But to jump straight to that conclusion can cost us so much. If there is something “new” about this command to love, it is not a generic command to be good to the poor. It is the way that loving service takes place. Jesus did not up and wash the feet of random strangers. He did not pay other people to wash their feet.

No, John is quite clear about the order of events. First, he tells us, Jesus “loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” Loved his own… that’s not a vague appeal to be kind to everyone. That’s not a safe and sterile sort of gesture. It is an investment. Three years at least Jesus spent making the Apostles his own. There is an intimacy here that goes beyond a single gesture. Though popular wisdom would have you believe that Jesus just wants us to “love everyone,” what we see here is a scandalously exclusive kind of love. Of course Jesus loves everyone! But he spends the majority of his time with 12 men and a few women. He even narrows it down farther to just 3 who are, in fact, closer than everyone else. Only one of those is called the disciple whom Jesus loved. To love like Jesus is to love particular people, not “humanity.”

This is the reality of human nature, of our limitations of time and space. If we always stay “up here” and loving “everyone” in a general way, we love no one. But this is not mere preference either! Jesus didn’t pick the 12 men he liked the most. No, there is a deference to providence, to working with those who were there at that time and place. He acted constantly from prayer, seeking his Father’s will.

There is also a risk here. They aren’t just some guys he helped, they are his. It is no coincidence that Jesus “loves his own” on the same night literally gives them his body and blood. To love one another as Christ loves us is to invest in each other, even though that’s how Judas gets in. To love one another as Jesus loves us is to see those providence has put in our lives, pray for them, and then consciously choose to love them, whether we like them or not.

This is why you cannot fulfill this command with remote programs run by governments and non-profits. As good as those things are, they are not new enough to be what Jesus is asking of us. The recipients of such charity can’t really hurt us, which means they are not yet our own. For me, you are my own. Providence has put the people of Jeanerette before me, giving you more right to my time and attention, more power to receive from and to hurt me than others. Prayer and providence has put some of you closer still. Though by no means perfect, the extra time and attention that some receive is a sacramental sign, a real world, embodied expression of my love for all of you.

Yet the people of St. John’s are not just my own, but ought to be your own. For all my efforts, successes, and failures in this, your own response to this command cannot be forgotten. Providence has put you here, but have you made us your own? Have you embraced the people of this time and place? Are there a dozen people in this community you can call your own? Even three? Have you prayed for them, invested in them whether or not you always like them? Have you allowed us to make you our own? Who in this building, who in this parish, who in this neighborhood, this town is close enough to you to be your Judas? And will you still wash their feet?

This is the newness of the command to love, that “loving everyone” must start with loving someone enough to call them your own. It’s not to smother and cling to people who refuse to let us in – the Apostles did agree to follow Jesus and to receive and return his love. It’s not to foolishly throw ourselves those who are obviously malicious either. No, it is to risk investing in fallible, broken people… people who will accept that love and even love us back, but could nonetheless one day succumb to their faults at our expense.

How can Jesus ask us to do this? To invest my time, money, mental and emotional health in the odd assortment of people around me? Because he was “fully aware… that he had come from God and was returning to God.” Jesus loved his own “to the end” because his love, his very being was rooted in God and oriented toward God. To love like I’ve described is reckless if you rely on your own love. We either risk making idols of our loved ones or becoming broken, resentful cynics.

This command to love is eternally new because its source is eternal. This kind of invested, sacramental, risky love is not actually one human being loving another. It is one human being loving God enough to let God love another person through him. It is that human being loving God enough to love God in that other person. It is being so deeply rooted in God – coming from him – and so set on following God – returning to him – that we can face the disappointments and betrayal of our “own” without fearing it will cost us ourselves.

In other words, to love each other like Christ is to be so equipped with God’s love that we are no longer afraid of “losing our investment” in others because, even if we do, God supplies even more. Thus we are free to love them to the end in specific, concrete moments: in the time they “cost” us, the humdrum washing of feet, the acceptance of quirks and faults, the expenses and liabilities.

I give you a new commandment. New not because it’s never been said to you, but new because each new moment in your life is another chance to make that infinite, eternal, inexhaustible love sacramentally present. “Love one another as I have loved you…” one foot at a time.

This is Part I of a three part homily series on the Triduum. See part II here.