and I will love myself who in the world did love them and so began. The gospel today sets the theme for our reflections. Reflections which I am sure I share with you as the reflection of your own thoughts and your own desires. with reference to Holy Thursday and the mysteries that this day commemorates. Our Lord told his disciples, I have not called you servants, but friends. And if we all, perhaps, indeed we all are, if we are friends of Christ, then we are friends of one another. And friends share good things amongst themselves. And I would like to share with you something of the mystery of Christ, a marvel, a majesty, a glory, a wonder, a mystery of Jesus Christ, which is conveyed to us so beautifully in the sacrament of the one whose institution we particularly commemorate today.

[01:23]

And it's in this atmosphere of friendship mutual sharing that we can best approach the mystery of Christ. The last word of the Eucharist, as it is the last word of redemption on the cross, is love. This is the inner dynamism of the interior life of Christ, as it is of every genuine Christian life. Love can only be understood by love. So that you and I today as we gather about the altar, are engaged in a dialogue with one another, mixed very with questions. I am presenting to you something which lies deep within yourselves. It is faith in Christ, not for Christ, that brings us here. Now the character of love about which so much has been written It tends to allure us simply because it surpasses expression.

[02:28]

Love, as we say, is proven by deeds, not by words. It's known by experience, not by speculation. If we have love in our lives, then we have lived. If love is not in our lives, then we have not and do not live. Love is life, is soul. And the paradox of more books about this, is that we love, we live within ourselves, we are ourselves, by going out to others, by loving others. Saint Paul says, love seeks not its own. The good of the beloved is regarded as one's own good. His happiness constitutes the great goal of objective towards which one strives. One is willing, when love is perfect, to carry this to any lengths that make it to man.

[03:31]

Bigger love than this, no man can have this. And then a man lays down his wife or his parents. Love tends to multiply, to increase, to go out to many. Love draws us out of the bosom of the family, while yet we have to leave him, of course. Love, parents, relatives, especially. But love draws us out to others, to a community such as this, to a family that we make our own, and to the whole of the human race. And this logical love, it's a logic of reason, is to be found in the life of God. This is no explanation of God's doing. It is simply explained by us. It is because he was, that he has suffered, that he has died, has risen again.

[04:36]

It's because of what? That he instituted the Holy Eucharist. It is love, so to speak, shadow, that circle of the whole Trinity, which surely is the perfect friendship. But the divine persons wish to reach out even further. And so the Son comes forth and enters into this world. He seeks after man. He yearns for man. He pursues man. almost as though he were forgiving his father, like St. Paul. I press on through the things that lie before me, and I forgive those that lie behind me. One would think that the father might reproach the son who identifies himself so completely with man, reversing the direction so sneakily as well as from the cross.

[05:41]

Father might say, my son, my son, why have you forsaken me? We know that this is not true. The Gospel record makes that clear. To seek us is not to forget the Father. And our Lord entered into this world and does so because he is filled by the Father. God so loved the world He so loved you, you individually, and me. That is fair now, His only begotten Son. The Son is in the world because the Father wished Him to be here. And the Father is with Him. He will count on one and make all four with Him. And yet the thought of Christ separated from heaven has a certain truth to it, a certain validity.

[06:45]

It goes into the foremost parts of the universe. I'm speaking of the moral of the verse, in search of man. It goes into those small deserts where man lives, desert, normal, and separated from God, the eminent God, through sin. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Always lost. You and I are always lost. And he found us. So you see that what carries God on to a certain identification with us, what always produces and sharing, and a certain wondrous identification we may support. So He is one with us, He is a man even sweeter than many, and He takes to Himself the whole of humanity.

[07:54]

There is one scene in the Gospel of St. John, a scene within the Passion, which perhaps conveys this very clearly to us. Pilate has had Christ scourged, and he has been crowned with thorns, and then he is brought out before the prophets. He is bloodied, beaten, and terrible. Sufferings of this passion have begun. And Pilate says, Behold, we are bad. is things actually wrong. Behold, man. We may translate this, Behold, man. For Christ has taken all of us, the whole of the universe, unto himself. He has not consent with accepting our body and mind.

[09:00]

sharing in our human nature, he wants to share our human condition. And so the whole man's weight of human suffering and sorrow and misery and such is always in our measure of illustrious upon himself in order all lashes, fruits, and wine, and raises us up into him to the glory of his resurrection. Behold, man, behold your sin, behold your beginning. Some man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Love identifies itself in the middle.

[10:02]

and restores upon it all that it possesses. This, therefore, is the redemption, alloting mankind to itself. But love is never content viewing people unwise. It must take them, take hold of them individually. The mind embraces totalities. of will, of heart, and love. It replaces persons, individuals. And so, to the great one and sweep of the redemption, Christ upon the cross, spreading out his arms, to take to himself the world, there must be united the Holy Eucharist, whereby Jesus comes to each one of us, singing, individually, person, in order to pass on to us the treasures of the Redemption.

[11:09]

It enters within us. It is your mighty tools. You will see once again what workings of God which begets you and unity and identification. It will be all of us, not merely as mankind, but as you and me. Our blackness is all. He makes His equation ours. He enters into our hearts in the Eucharist in order to sanctify, to redeem, to console, and to save. What should we say of this union which has no parallel to all of our living human experience? If the saints evoke symbols and images and metaphors, it's a thoroughgoing awareness of their continued efficiency. If Christ is born with us as the heirloom's country by the sun or the flames of two pears, one and one another, or like steel that is turned into fire by the flame,

[12:28]

which it misses. St. Paul, perhaps, conveyed his reality to you, so spiritual, yet so real, mystical, yet in his senses, physical, by an image which carves more than us in his letters. We are all familiar with what we call the doctrine of the mystical body. especially based upon supertexts of St. Paul. Christ is the head, we say, and we are the members. There's one body, one great man. Behind this image, as St. Augustine comments, there lies a much larger image, a large image, too, that I'm making warm. Christ is head of his body, the Church. As a husband, his head is pointing higher.

[13:32]

When the elements truly make one will, carrying the analogy further, we move the dispirited order of course, but it doesn't wait on Christ to communicate to us this argumentative. Christ, too, who is the bridegroom of the church. He is one body with that church. And the body is the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost of Christ, whereby we are incorporated in Jesus Christ. He, therefore, is the ultimate rich of the bridegroom's life, whereby two lives fuse one another and make one. On this Feast of Holy Thursday, there is just one last thought It's particularly appropriate since we will be coming together to the Holy Trinity in order to communicate in the body of the Lord.

[15:04]

And since we will have the ceremony of the Magdala, the washing of the feet, Magdala means commandment, the commandment of love which Christ gave to us. This means love and service, one of His expressions, service of His times. was the washing of the people, the slaves, the poor, those who came back or sent us. Now here again, in connection with the Eucharist and behind the Eucharist, as we know, we have the whole vast mystery of redemption. There is one beautiful text of Saint Paul. He says that we, being many, We, all young men, are here one body in Christ. We are one body in Christ. We are united in individual and personal, but always in the context of the Church.

[16:08]

So that we are all Christ, just as each one is Christ. We all share in that one life. communicate to us individually and belong to us as a whole, belong, as it does, to the Church. And so the great commandment, di mandato, the love of the brethren, is such, because the great commandment is the love of Christ, whatever you do to even the least of my brethren, you do unto me. Now this is an obvious proof We know as Christians, as Catholics, we call to practice the Lord. But we fail in many ways, every day. That great danger, great evil, is that it comes to take ground. It becomes part of our lives. That neglect, that jealousy, that positive dislike, even hatred, which goes contrary

[17:15]

to the law of the law. We are scandalized and shocked by St. Peter's words, as they are reproduced in the literature for mass today. Lord, you shall not wash my feet. Peter was refusing this service that Christ wished to run to him and mock him. But there was a greater offense. Angels shall save you. that perhaps implicitly we ourselves may be every day. I shall but wash your feet. I will but serve you in my service. I will but truly love you, bring joy, happiness, peace into their lives. and tranquility, and the satisfaction of their needs, insofar as we can minister to them. We can fail within the bosom of all those bedrooms, as we can fail within the bosom of the monastic community.

[18:23]

We should forget that whatever we do to even the least, as we would say that the most unlawful of brethren, we do unto Christ. The remedy for this is to come to the holy temple, to the altar in which we receive the body and the word of the Lord. We make our own that tremendous heart of charity of love which carried our Lord onto the cross and his resurrection that brings us to him and him to us in the Eucharistic and as we shall soon be sharing in it. We make it out of all. That means we're forced to share with others. Whatever you do to even the least of my brothers, one will dislike the other. Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me.

[19:27]

If you refuse to love him, you refuse to love me. That applies to our own media structure. and reaches out to this vast world of human affairs in such great total relativity, we have our responsibility to bear the ills that afflict mankind, war, racial prejudice, social injustice, and enormous skill. We have our responsibility to bear this, because we dare not follow and to fulfill the great commandment of love. We, being many, are one body in Jesus Christ. We shall not hate the heavens, but thereby hate the heaven itself. We must love all. We must serve all. Some man is not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life

[20:35]

Ransom or all. By this shall all men know that you are my brothers, if you have law or one another. How much of it? Having what is all, within the world, we want nothing less.

[20:53]

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