Mass of the Lord’s Supper April 2, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
N.B. This is the first of a three-part series of homilies on the topic of desire. The second part can be found [not live yet] and the third part [not live yet].
“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Lk 22:15). You could say that desire is destiny. Not that that is always a good thing. The human heart wants many things it should not want and fails to want many of the things it should. Anyone who has known an addict can tell you the fatal power of desire unchecked. Anyone who has lost a loved one to depression and self-destruction can tell you the fatal power of lacking desire.
If you cater to too many desires, you wind up like the man possessed by a legion of demons. If you cater too much to the wrong desires, you wind up an addict. If you never recognize and stoke the right desires, you wind up listless and lifeless. So no, when I say “desire is destiny,” I don’t mean desire is a magical force that guarantees certain outcomes. I mean that desire is necessary for human life and that how we nurture or suppress our desires will determine the shape of that life.
Now that we’ve begun the Paschal Triduum, the three-part liturgy of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, I will embark on my customary practice centering the three homilies for these days on single unifying theme. This year will be a three-part reflection on the power of desire. Tonight we reflect on the desire for love. Tomorrow will take us through the desire for a challenge; it might even be called a desire for suffering. At the Easter Vigil, we’ll conclude with the desire for light, the desire to see even when it is dark.
Let’s begin with Jesus telling us about his desire – his eager desire – to eat the Passover with us. As with any human being, Jesus wants many many things. Later tonight, Jesus will express his desire to avoid the crucifixion. Yet he will deny that desire in favor of wanting to do his Father’s will. But this desire to eat with us, to commune with us? This is the desire he chooses to nurture and strives to satisfy. There are a library’s worth of books on the theological meaning behind Jesus choosing the Passover to be the meal he shares with his disciples, but the best parts of the best of those books agree on this: God is Love and because he is Love, God loves us and he desires us to love him in return.
By telling his apostles of his yearning to share this ritual meal, this commemoration of God setting his people free and drawing them into his own family by a covenant of blood, Jesus is using the divine language of scripture to say “I want you to love me.” It’s not a desperate or needy love – God is perfect and perfectly happy with or without us – but it is love the truest sense of the word: to love is to will the good of the other. God made us for himself, so what’s best for us is to love God, to be in communion with him. In other words, Jesus wants us to love him not because he needs our love to make himself happy, but because what makes us happy is loving him.
This is why we begin with the desire to love rather than end with it. All good things ultimately begin with God’s love. Everything we do is really a response to that love, a choice for or against an eternal love we cannot change or control. Our desire to be loved? It’s there because God loves us first. Our desire for anything is really the result of the love of God which created us and gave us freedom. Those desires are often twisted, but in their purest, most original form, they spring out of God’s love like grapes from the vine.
God loves us and because he loves us, he desires us to love him in return. Original Sin has trapped us, however, with twisted desires, too many desires, or the unhealthy lack of desire. So God knew he’d have to teach us how to love him, to teach us which desires to satisfy and how. More importantly, he knew he’d have to show us by becoming one of us. That is where we are tonight: God-made-man sits with other men so that he can show us how to make our desire for love into the destiny of love.
Enough poetry! It is time for action, for practical solutions! How, then, do we recognize and fulfill our desire for love in the right way? Communion, Conversion, and Service. Desire is destiny. If we want the right desires and the right destiny, we should tie our desire for love to a desire for communion, a desire for conversion, and a desire for service.
Communion is the part that comes both first and last. The Mass is the “source and summit” of the Christian life. When your heart is stirred to seek love, look always for the way in which that love comes out of and leads to a desire to be with someone. Southern & Cajun culture – nearly every culture, really, but southern & Cajun culture more than most – connect love with food. I love you, so I’ll feed you. I want to be united to you, so I’ll share a meal with you. That’s a good natural expression of the supernatural truth about God’s love.
If you want the right destiny, learn how to properly nourish your desire to be with others, to share meals with them, to feed them both figuratively and literally. Learn to recognize and be grateful for the ways that your life is already the byproduct of communion with other people.
Sacramental communion is the most perfect expression of this on earth. Receive communion worthily so that you can both inflame and satisfy your desire for loving union with God and others. Communion is the most perfect expression, but not the only one. If you cannot receive communion or even if you can, spend time with God who eagerly desires to spend time with you. Prayer, attendance at Mass and other liturgies, eating the “bread” of reading scripture, and spending time with his disciples… these are the actions of a person who desires the right kind of love and the actions of someone who wants to want the right thing even if they don’t really and truly want it just yet.
Among sinful human beings – so, all of us – the desire for love in the form of communion necessarily leads to a desire for love in the form of conversion. We hurt each other and fail each other. If we wish to be together, we must grow accustomed to apologizing, to seeking forgiveness, and to granting forgiveness. A married couple that learns how to spend time together, to communicate clearly, and to forgive each other can survive anything, even betrayal. Judas’ failure isn’t that he wanted to betray Jesus, it’s that he did not desire to be forgiven by him. This is why Jesus, who is love incarnate, uses the last night of his earthly life to wash his disciples’ feet. “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me,” he tells Peter.
God can forgive simply by willing it, but he chooses to use human hands, human words, and even physical water to forgive the sins of his apostles. He knows that, if we desire to love him, we need his grace and mercy to actually do it. So, he offers that grace and mercy in a way human beings understand: words, gestures, and stuff. Baptism uses physical water to wash away invisible sin. Confession uses audible human words to absolve silent faults. These empower us to not only acknowledge our offenses against God but against each other. We can not only acknowledge them, but take steps towards correcting them. Every sin forgiven and every act of conversion is one more choice to remove a barrier between us and the ones we love. If you want the destiny of eternal love, choose to nourish your desire for conversion.
Finally, an authentic desire for communion and conversion cannot help but bear fruit in a desire to serve those we love. Love, true love that is worthy of the name, is something active and generous. We necessarily start by receiving love first from God, then from parents and countless others. Maturity, however… becoming a master of our own humanity requires us to imitate the Master, the most perfect human, Jesus Christ, who washed his disciples feet. Over and above the theological symbolism of washing feet as a sign of confession, it is also a literal, physical act of service. “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.”
If you want the destiny of eternal love, choose to nurture your desire to care for the practical needs of others without concern for personal benefit. Nurture the desire to serve the needs of others, even when those others could betray you. Jesus knew Judas would betray him, yet he washed his feet. Judas’ hardness of heart meant he was unable to receive the grace and forgiveness of the action, but his physical feet were still cleansed and his body still refreshed by the food and drink offered him out of love.
It is no easy task to love like this, no simple choice to nurture this kind of desire while cutting away the desires that run contrary to it. But desire is destiny and if we seek the destiny of eternal joy, we must strive to inflame and nurture the desire to love as Christ loved. That is indeed a challenge and one that will be filled with suffering. Fortunately for us, our God-given human nature, assisted by grace, is capable even of desiring, of wanting to face the difficulties this task entails. Tomorrow, we’ll engage with that desire as we follow the Lord to his crucifixion.
For tonight, at least, remember that Jesus has “eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” because he loves you. And, because he loves you, he wants you to know the joy of loving him in return. Love him by seeking communion with him and his people in its many forms. Love him by seeking conversion so your love for God and man may become more genuine. Love him by serving one another as Love Himself has already done for you. Do this, and you’ll make what Jesus has “eagerly desired” into your destiny.