17/04/2025

Maundy Thursday 

We are now at the beginning of the events which are the conclusion of God's participation in human life exactly as it is experienced by each one of us.

The farewell meal and institution of the  Blessed Sacrament, Jesus' (IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT) forever presence in his Church, took place in the Upper Room. Jesus was the only one who knew the unique significance of his words. 

With "This is my body" a new way of being is created. He creates his Sacramental Presence, "I will be with you until the end of time", even before the events that seal the revelation that has happened over the 33 years he has spent as true man.

It must have taken some time for the Divine Reality of their Resurrected, "I call you friends", Rabbi to be absorbed into the disciples' consciousness and for the cosmic significance of the last meal they had shared together to become a liturgical event.

In today's letter to the Corinthians, written less that 30 years after Jesus had "returned to his Father" St Paul is quite clear in his instructions for how the nascent communities of "Christians" should worship together and share with each other the love that they had all received as they came to understand the great Love that Our Father had lavished on all his people.

The Great Love that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT still maintains the whole cosmic order that we experience in human life. We were to have the support of the Sacraments to help us to be part of this order of holiness. I do not doubt any of the teaching of Jesus "True Man and True God" but just as, "The Jews" of Jesus time on earth had failed to maintain holiness that was their side of the covenant and had thus required the Incarnation's Atoning Passion to set it right for us to be able to live according to God's Word, so it is that the Institutional Church has never acted as if it believed Jesus' publicly uttered "My kingdom is not of this World".

Three crowns are three too many for the successors of St Peter. Peter denied Christ 3 times as  Jesus warned at today's meal. His Patrimony is rather his tears of remorse than the territorial claims of so many of the Popes, his use of violence against the enemies of Christ was instantly condemned by Jesus' healing the wounded soldier rather than accepted as an act justified as self defence or resistance to evil.

Where are we able to find the Church founded on St Peter? I hope that it is the New Holy Family, "the Church of Love", "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother" that will be the Real Presence until the end of time. The History of the Petrine Institution affords too many examples of direct disobedience of the Word of God for it to be able to purify the Temple which responded to the Incarnation by the crucifying of Jesus Son of God and Son of Mary.