“Institution of the Eucharist: God’s Kiss!”
Holy Thursday of the Lord’s Supper
This evening, as we begin the celebration of the Sacred Triduum, in which we recall and celebrate the great mystery of our salvation, we begin with the Lord’s Supper. On this night we celebrate the Institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist of Christ’s Body and Blood – the central characteristic of our Catholic faith.
The meal that Jesus shared with his Disciples that night in the Upper Room was a sacred meal, which began like the Passover meal that we heard about in our first reading. But unlike the Passover meal, something critical and essential was changed. As St. Paul recalled in the 2nd reading, Jesus took bread and consecrated it as His body. Likewise, He took the Chalice of wine and consecrated it as His Blood.
The meaning of the Institution of the Eucharist goes much deeper than that. The gift of the Eucharist that we share this evening is “extraordinary” because it is the living Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.
In his book, Our One Great Act of Fidelity; Waiting for Christ In the Eucharist, Ronald Rolheiser attaches a deeper meaning to the Eucharist that I believe is worth sharing on this special night.
Rolheiser states: “The most ancient and primal ritual of all is the ritual of physical embrace. It can say and do what words cannot.”
Jesus acted on this premise. For most of his ministry, he used words. Through words, he tried to bring us God’s consolation, challenge, and strength and love. Jesus’ words, like all words, had a certain power. Indeed, his words stirred hearts, healed people, and affected conversions. But powerful though they were, in time they too became inadequate. Something more was needed.
So, on the night before he died, having exhausted what he could do with words, Jesus went beyond words. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart. This is the best understanding there is of Eucharist. The Eucharist, like a kiss, needs no explanation and has no explanation. The Eucharist is God’s kiss!
In this past year when we have been distraught with fear, overwhelmed with sickness around us, filled with grief at the death of loved ones with whom we could not even sit with and say goodbye or give an embrace, we need more than words. We need to be physically touched; we need to be embraced. This is what happens in the Eucharist and it is why the Eucharist, and every other Catholic sacrament, always has some tangible, physical element to it – a laying on of hands, a consuming of bread and wine, an immersion in water, an anointing with oil. An embrace needs to be physical, something imagined.
There comes a point, even with God, when words are not enough. God has to pick us up, like a mother her child when the child is restless. A physical embrace is what is needed. Skin needs to be touched. God knows that. That is why Jesus gave us the Eucharist.
When we receive the Eucharist, it is God kissing us, it is God embracing us. It is God showing us how much He loves us!
In the Eucharist we assure one another that we still have one another, that we still have God, and that we still have Christ’s promise to, one day, wipe away our every ache and give us the ecstasy we so painfully crave. In the Eucharist we wait for Christ’s return.