A Homily for Holy Thursday – Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14   1 Corinthians 11:23-26   John 13:1-15

Many of us discovered our dearest, deepest friendships away at school. Perhaps because the surety of home fell away like a chrysalis as our emotions were coming into full bloom. 

Leaving for Cambridge, the great Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson left behind a large family in his father’s Lincolnshire rectory. At the university, he met a young man named Arthur Hallam. He would become the love of the poet’s life if we were to judge by the decades of poetry that Tennyson composed to grieve Hallam, who died unexpectedly from a stroke at age 22. 

Their love cannot be coaxed into our contemporary categories. Tennyson later married Emily Sellwood, one of his several belles, and, at the time of his death, Hallam was engaged to the poet’s 18-year-old sister Emilia. 

One summer, during their Cambridge years, Tennyson and Hallam hiked the French Pyrenees. Hallam described their favorite spot, the Cauterets Valley, as a place of “precipitous defiles, jagged mountain tops, forests of solemn pine, travelled by dewy clouds and…waters, in all shapes, and all powers.”

Decades later, still composing laments for his lost friend, Tennyson returned to Cauterets.

All along the valley, where thy waters flow
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.
All along the valley, while I walked today,
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down the rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

Notice the agonistic antonyms. A living voice and the voice of the dead switch places, like wrestlers after a throw. Returning to the place where their friendship was forged, past and present commune beyond the coordinates of our world. Tennyson again hears Hallam. A voice long silenced speaks, though it remains a dead voice. Spirit and flesh commune, but they do not comingle. 

The night before he died, our Lord Jesus brought a new reality into the world. As Lord of creation, he authored something previously unimagined. He found a new way to unite the realms of spirit and flesh. 

In the mysteries of Holy Week, the Redeemer did more than remain in the recollections of his loved ones, a martyr hailed in their memories. He did not rise above and beyond us, returning to the realm of pure spirit. No, he remains with us. He comes to us repeatedly as sacrament. 

Like other acts of genius, the utter novelty of Christ’s sacramental presence now seems almost foreordained. If in the Incarnation the Son of God, who had been pure spirit, chose to come among us, that unique spot in creation where matter and spirit are wed, then on this night he chose to remain among us. He is still incarnate, still enfleshed, in the mysteries we call sacraments.

Christ took bread, and said, “This is me for you.” Likewise, at meal’s end, he raised the last chalice, the cup of blessing, and with unparalleled irony said that his untimely, unjust death would be the very cause of our future great act of thanksgiving. 

Other sacraments flow from this first act, most notably baptism, our entrance into his own dear self. In the fourth century, at the time of St. Ambrose, the ancient Milanese rite of initiation recognized the birth of baptism on this night by including the washing of feet in the Easter ritual.

In baptism and Eucharist we ride streams of water and blood into the very heart of the Savior. In every sacrament, the paradox Tennyson penned is repeated.

Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead.
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

“God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth” (Jn 4:24). God, who is pure spirit, became man. “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14). The night before he died, the Word-made-flesh found a way for life to speak in death. He allowed himself to be torn from his own by death, yet he remains among us as sacrament. 

How do we know this? We know, because like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we have recognized him in the breaking of the bread. We know because we have found remission for our sins in the waters of baptism. We know that

this is the one who came through water and blood,
Jesus Christ, not by water alone, 
but by water and blood. 
The Spirit is the one that testifies, 
and the Spirit is truth.
So there are three that testify,
the Spirit, the water, and the blood, 
and the three are of one accord (1 Jn 5:6-8).

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.