Thursday night, Friday morning

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant... (Philippians 2:5-7)

Therefore we before him bending
this great Sacrament revere:
types and shadows have their ending,
for the newer rite is here;
faith, our outward sense befriending,
makes our inward vision clear.
(Thos. Aquinas: Hymn 329/330)

On this day, all the “types and shadows have their ending.” The atonement foretold in the Passover (“When I see the blood, I will pass over you”) and Yom Kippur looked toward this day. As the Epistle to the Hebrews explains, the blood of bulls and goats cannot atone for our wickedness (10:4); they were shadows of a greater redemption that was to come, and now is. The veil of the temple is rent (St. Matthew 27:51), and we can now “enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:19-20).

Last night at the Maundy Thursday service, the sermon emphasized the footwashing and the New Commandment. It was left for the Celebrant to emphasize the Institution of the Eucharist, the other great focus of Maundy Thursday, as recounted in the Collect for the Day and the first two Lessons (Exodus 12:1-14 and I Corinthians 11:23-26), and the white altar paraments and vestments. She did so by singing the elaborate Mozarabic chant appointed for the Preface of Eucharistic Prayer D in the American BCP (based on a Greek Orthodox model; the chant is found in the Altar Book, but I had never heard it done until this night) and by her careful celebration of the Eucharist. One of the virtues of her work at the altar is that she always acts as if this thing in which she is participating, the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, is the most important thing in the world – which it is. This was especially evident last night, and the sung Preface was overwhelming in its splendor.

She had a bit of trouble in breaking the bread. For reasons I will not here recount, a “real” loaf of bread is used for this service, an un-sliced loaf purchased across the street at the store. Suffice it to say that she was using this loaf out of obedience, not from free choice. She did the best she could with it. And that brings me to another side of the Holy Sacrament: it is glorious beyond all imagining, but it is also lowliest of all, humblest of all, “obedient unto death.”

The Rector concluded the overnight Watch with a brief distribution of the remaining bread and wine at 7 am, drawn from the Form for Communion under Special Circumstances (BCP p. 396). He finished up and went his way. It was left for our retired priest, Fr. H., to clean up. He is in his eighties and does not get around very well. But he got on his knees behind the Altar and picked up the crumbs, which were many, by moistening his fingertip so it would pick them up from the floor, then eating them. Once I realized what he was doing, I helped by going along behind the altar rail and doing the same. “Therefore before him bending, this great Sacrament revere...”

We all shirk the consequences of our actions; the inconvenient little details of our lives that we wish would just “go away” can often be passed off to others, to the “servants” (e.g., members of the Altar Guild, or the Sexton). But the buck has to stop somewhere. There has to be someone sufficiently low, to whom all the dirty work, the consequences of our actions, has to fall. It might be slaves in China who make the electronic gadgets and clothing that we buy in the stores. It might be someone in our family who always cleans up after us. It might be the people in America driven into poverty so that the “one percent” can remain comfortable. It might be the Latinos who butcher our meat and harvest our crops. J.F. told me recently about an economics class she is taking: the class discussion turned to such matters as the Greek “austerity” and the increasing inequality in this country. The professor summed it up: “Someone has to suffer.”

Someone did. He who is Highest became Lowest, drinking the cup of our wickedness to the last of its most bitter dregs.