Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday begins the three day, three part service of Holy Week. This day commemorates the Last Supper, when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and established the Eucharist. “Mandatum novum do vobis” (“a new commandment I give to you”) is the command given by Christ at the Last Supper, that we should love one another.

The foot washing has been, in the past few years for me, at the emotional core of Maundy Thursday. This year, though, it is the personal confession opening the service that rivets my heart. How many opportunities slip away where I could recognize where I personally miss the mark. Each Sunday it is so easy to crowd away from my mind and spirit during the service, all my actions that were rooted in ego, cynicism, routine or laziness throughout the week.

The commandment is global but even applying this locally is challenging. For me church is the foundation of where this kind of love begins. I think about how close so many people in our congregation are to each other.

This year the observance of Holy Week also reminds me how much more meaningful it becomes for me each year. Dante Alighieri chose to begin his epic poem the Commedia Divina--Divine Comedy on Maundy Thursday and today this links with this command to love one another. My awareness was triggered by a recent exploration of Dante’s work.

Most of us, when we read Dante, focus on the Inferno. There is a palpable feel to the images we encounter in this first part of the Divine Comedy. However a few lines from the Paradiso captures a perspective and depth to Jesus’ commandment this year I had not apprehended completely in my heart until now:

O grace abundant, by which I presumed
To fix my sight upon the Light Eternal,
So that the seeing I consumed therein!

I saw that in its depth far down is lying
Bound up with love together in one volume,
What through the universe in leaves is scattered;

Substance, and accident, and their operations,
All interfused together in such wise
That what I speak of is one simple light.

The universal fashion of this knot
Methinks I saw, since more abundantly
In saying this I feel that I rejoice.

With these lines in mind Jesus' commandment to love one another illuminates my thoughts and how I view the world and the people around me.

So often we assume there is a constant scarcity of resources in our daily life. This is how life appears, particularly when the theory of evolution is accepted which has its root in Thomas Malthus and his "Principle of Population". In this view all of us compete for life and resources. What we are given is divided with the constant questions as to the justice and fairness of the division.

Jesus, in this one commandment, offers a way to shatter this assumption. As Dante writes, what through the universe in leaves is scattered is “bound up with love together in one volume”. Loving one another as unique pages, each necessary for the whole volume, is now at the heart of the commandment for me. To lose one page is to diminish the relationship of our universe with God. There is a new meaning and urgency to this commandment today that challanges me to put into practice what goes against my 'common sense'.

This brings it all home again to me with the confession I found so important in this Maundy Thursday service.

There are lyrics going over and over in my head as Mary and I leave worship. They are from the Joni Mitchell song, The Three Great Stimulants:

I picked the morning paper off the floor
It was full of other people's little wars
Wouldn't they like their peace
Don't we get bored
And we call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence