March 29/Holy Thursday
How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me? ~ Ps 116.12
“What can I give him, poor as I am?” asks the poet Christina Rossetti in the Christmas hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The psalmist, too, wonders, “How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me?” These are rhetorical questions, of course: there is no way we can pay God back. God does not want opulent sacrifices, conspicuous acts of worship (designed to impress others), or elaborate monuments. What, then, can we give him to respond to the love he so freely bestows on us? As Rossetti knew, we can give him our hearts. And we do that by undertaking simple, quotidian acts of love and service for those we encounter every day. There is no better example than the foot-washing ceremony during the celebration of the Lord’s Supper tonight. I have always found this one of the most moving liturgical moments of the Christian year: the re-enactment of the LORD of all creation squatting down to bathe the dusty feet of his followers. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, just after the Earl of Gloucester is viciously blinded, a servant says, “I’ll fetch some flax and whites of eggs / To apply to his bleeding face.” This small gesture of loyalty and kindness may seem insignificant against the vast sweep of the tragedy, but it is a pinpoint of light in the gaping darkness. In the face of the overwhelming inhumanity, brutality, and violence that surround us, what we can give to the world is our care and our love, even in their most mundane forms. That’s how we make a return to the LORD.
O Lord of all creatures great and small, May I readily stoop to conquer the evils of the world with small acts of love. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032918-lords-supper.cfm
