Things
surely couldn’t be going according to plan. To be sure, their leader had some
great ideas, but he was so impractical. He wasn’t appealing to the masses. The
popularity figures were far too low. The opposition was too strong. This was a
time for pragmatic leadership, not naïve idealism. Compromises needed to be
made in the short term in order to get to the long term goal.
It’s
all very well talking about loving people, but when it comes to loving your
enemies, that’s going too far. People aren’t ready for that. No, the enemies
have to be got out of the way first, then we can love whoever is left. Whoever
is on our side.
Of
course, we can keep our leader, this Jesus, as a figurehead. He has some great
ideas after all. But we need some down to earth people to put them into
practice, to know what is doable and what isn’t. What Jesus doesn’t seem to
realise is that politics is the art of the possible. So, if we can put him to
one side, keep him as a figurehead, we can form a focus group to prioritise
what is achievable. As for the rest, well, there’s no harm in it remaining an
ideal, an aspiration.
We
don’t know of course what was going through the mind of Judas Iscariot when he
decided to betray Jesus. Maybe something like that. All the disciples were
puzzled, confused and downcast. Jesus had entered Jerusalem in triumph only a
few days before, as though he were about to overthrow the Romans and restore
the Kingdom of David. Hadn’t that been what they all thought? They were still
pulling bits of palm frond out of their sandals to remind them. But now he was
talking about his death, saying farewell, telling them they will all fail. What
kind of talk is that for a leader?
But
Jesus knows the great truth that St Paul states in 1 Corinthians, that the
foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is
stronger than human strength.
And so
tonight, as he says farewell, Jesus gives two great gifts that show the wisdom
and strength of God in things that the world will always consider foolish and
weak. He gives the Eucharist, his flesh and blood for the life of the world
under the form of bread and wine. And he gives the great commandment, love one
another, as I have loved you, even to laying down your life.
The
Eucharist has always attracted scorn and indifference, from the very first
moment that Jesus first disclosed this great secret in the synagogue at
Capernaum, as is related in John Chapter 6. From that day to this there have
always been those who have demanded to know, “how can this man give us his
flesh to eat?” Indeed in the Eucharist Jesus makes himself utterly weak and
helpless, he gives himself into our hands just as he was given into the hands
of sinners in that dark night in Gethsemane.
But to
those who know Jesus the small Host, the few drops from the chalice, convey a
strength that is stronger than anything in the world. Sinners become saints,
the dying receive the food of eternal life, prisoners in dark and terrible
concentration camps ardently desire the bread that has sustained martyrs down
the centuries.
And,
living from the food of the Eucharist, we are to love one another. How foolish
it is to take the lowest place, to seek to be the slave of all. How weak to
seek out and love the most abandoned, the most wretched, those whom the world
despises and casts aside. But that is how the people of the Eucharist live,
those who, by receiving these gifts, have been let in on the secret of eternal
life.
Do not
be afraid to be foolish or weak in the eyes of the world, for the foolishness
of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than
human strength. By living from these two great gifts, the Eucharist and the
commandment of love, we show the world not ourselves, but Christ, who tonight
freely enters into his passion. And these two great gifts will proclaim, to the
end of time, what he is about.
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