Gifts of the Last Supper

On the first Holy Thursday, Jesus gave us the gift of the priesthood and the Eucharist. Recently, Jesus reminded me of the power of these gifts. Here is how He did it….

I was on my way to meet some friends for dinner when my phone rang. Assuming it was another spam call from American Alarm, I did not pick up the phone. To my surprise, the mysterious caller left a voicemail. I listened to the 30-second message which said, “Good evening, Father Peter, this is Kyle from Tufts Medical Center. I am with a patient and her file indicates that she would like to see a Catholic priest before she dies. I was hoping you could respond to the call. It is urgent. Thank you and God bless.” 

With that, I made a U-turn on Day Boulevard and headed back to the rectory to change and get what I needed for this urgent visit. What I encountered once I finally got to the hospital room will forever be seared in my memory. 

I saw a woman, frail and discolored, lying completely alone in a hospital bed. She was hooked up to all sorts of tubes, wires, and machines. Medical equipment was eerily beeping, and machines were revving up and revving down. As I looked at this woman, I was immediately struck by the fact that as wonderful as all of this medical technology and scientific knowledge was, it was not enough to save her. Those machines and elite doctors, which truly are incredible, could attend to her medical needs, but they could not attend to her deepest, most profound needs. 

There I was, in the midst of this state-of-the-art equipment. An ordinary man, sporting a purple stole, holding a little container of oil, and carrying a golden pyx in the pocket next to my heart. I leaned in and spoke into her ear, “My name is Father Peter. I’ve come to bring you Jesus. He found you tonight because you are His daughter, and you are irreplaceable to Him. He did not want you to be alone. Can you squeeze my hand and tell Jesus you are sorry for all the sins of your life. He cannot wait to be with you.”

At that, her eyes opened a bit. I raised my right hand and spoke the words of absolution, administered the apostolic pardon, and anointed her forehead and weathered hands with the oil of the sick. As if that was not already good enough, Jesus wanted to embrace this dying woman, to look her straight in the face. And so, I knelt down, took out the golden pyx, broke off a piece of the sacred host and raised it up. As I placed Jesus in her slightly open mouth, I said “May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life.” 

Because Jesus possessed the beatific vision on that first Holy Thursday, His mind could embrace all space and time. He saw everything. At the Last Supper, Jesus thought about that woman dying alone in that hospital bed and he longed to find her. To accomplish this, He knew that He would be completely and substantially present – body, blood, soul, and divinity – in that very crumb she received. Stop and think about that for a moment. The same Jesus that instituted the Eucharist, that walked the shores of Galilee, came to be with that dying, lonely woman. Why? Because he loves us to the very end.(John 13:1) When the world, and even our own family leaves us for dead, our Eucharistic Lord finds us. 

Tonight, the whole Church rejoices and gives thanks to God for the gift of the Eucharist. For in the words of this Mass, “whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated, the work of our redemption is accomplished.” The Eucharistic sacrifice extends the incarnation to the present moment. Because of the Mass, Jesus is in your parish. Since he loves to the end, he draws close enough for us to consume Him. He begins to live His life in us. He wants to be one with you so badly that He accepts being mocked, ignored, and defiled in the Blessed Sacrament because loving you to the end is worth all of that and more. More importantly, He gives us the Eucharist so that we can be fit to live with Him in heaven. Remember the words of viaticum, the words I said to that woman before she went home to God, “May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and bring you to eternal life.” 

In the Exodus, we learn that God only passed over or spared the doors marked by the blood of the lamb. In much the same way, we need to receive the body and blood of Jesus to make the journey to heaven. We please God by resembling Jesus Christ. The Eucharist was instituted on Holy Thursday to make this resemblance possible for us. “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life within you.” (John 6:53) Let’s renew our commitment, our reverence, our love for Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament of the altar. At the end of the day, this is a matter of life and death. 

Also, on Holy Thursday we give thanks for the gift of the priesthood which makes the gift of the Eucharist possible. Cardinal Sean loves to remind us that there is no Eucharist, and therefore no heaven, without the priesthood. Just as Jesus saw that woman in her hospital bed on the first Holy Thursday, he saw all of the priests he would call in the future. He knew and loved them even then. He tailormade their humanity, gave them unrepeatable gifts so that they could bring his abiding Eucharistic presence to His people. 

At the Chrism Mass, the Bishop beseeches the Lord: “When you conferred the priesthood on the apostles and on us.”What a great reminder that priestly vocations do not begin the first day we show up to seminary or speak to someone about the call. Our vocation began in the Upper Room alongside the Apostles this very night.

Just as the Lord saw these men on the first Holy Thursday night, he saw all of the future priests he would call to serve the Church in the Archdiocese of Boston and beyond. To any man who has ever heard the whisper of God’s voice calling you to the priesthood: Be not afraid. Respond generously to the Lord’s gentle whisper and follow Him. Embrace the grace and the gift of Christ’s priesthood. Jesus asks for your yes so that no one has to die alone. Remember, the voicemail. The call is urgent!   

Finally, the priesthood and the Eucharist are instituted by Christ tonight to make the crowning jewel of this holy night possible. That is, the new law of charity, the command to love as Christ loves, that is to say, to love all the way to the end. 

On this night, Jesus says, do you realize what I have given you? Do you realize what I have done for you? Without the Eucharist, we cannot love as He commands. There is a reason the Blessed Sacrament is called the sacrament of love. We need it to love in the way He commands. We need it to love in a way worthy of heaven.

As Saint Thomas Aquinas says, the Eucharist does not just merely give us the habit of Charity, it gives us charity in action. Through the faithful and fruitful reception of the Eucharist, we become love. 

Our world needs to be ignited by the fire of divine love. Just as the night engulfs us, we must think about the dawn coming, we must believe that every morning the Church is revived by her saints. Let us never forget that we receive the same Jesus that all the saints received. We hear and participate in the same Mass. We are known and loved by the same God. The God who tonight through the gift of the Eucharist and his Sacred priesthood convinces us time and time again of the truth and the power of his words: “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.”