The
most striking aspect of Jesus’ actions in the text of the Mass is what can be
called Jesus’ creative anticipation of his death. Christ sacramentally
institutes in the present an action that overtakes in time the destructive
historical action of his murder that hasn’t yet occurred, while at the same
time giving to it a startling redemptive meaning. Thus, the interior
significance and effects of the future action of betrayal are radically changed
by divine intervention before the betrayal occurs.
The
malice of man is overtaken by the goodness of God. Love swallows up hatred,
even though the lover dies of its poisoning. A hate-filled enemy—including both
his evil intentions and his murderous deed—is embraced as brother and
friend. In the Sacrament, Jesus’ death becomes the source of our
life because the power of his love anticipates the mangling of his body and the
shedding of his blood, and it transforms their vital meaning and effect: from
an act of violent hatred it is transformed into the execution of a sacrifice
and the preparation of its victim as food. At a moment when one would
expect the victim to be overwhelmed with fear, such anticipation is instead a
forceful and deliberate initiative by the One in whom the universe was first
created and which the humiliated Word is now re-creating through his Passion.
Jesus
takes bread, pronounces a thanksgiving that changes it substantially into his
Body, breaks it and distributes it for eating; takes wine, blesses it and
transforms it into his Blood, and then pours it out to be drunk. This is Jesus’
way of guaranteeing that the Substance of his being will not fall on the Cross
into a bottomless abyss as a result of human violence, but rather that that
sacred Substance will be made available to all as a source of new life and joy:
“This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take
it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power
to lay it down, and power to take it up again” (Jn 10:17-18).
This
power and choice of Jesus to lay down his life contains the whole secret of his
love. At the very moment when he is going to allow himself to be handed over to
the forces of darkness, Jesus shows himself to be more than ever the sovereign
Lord of creation and of history: of creation, because he takes the elements of
bread and wine and re-creates them, transforming them into his Body and Blood;
of history, because he takes the impending evil deed of his betrayal and
transforms it already before it occurs into the best possible occasion for him
to surrender his person to us, his betrayers, out of love, as the Bridegroom of
the Church, with the total fidelity, dedication and passionate love that befits
a royal bridegroom.
The Last Supper, Ugolino da Siena (Italian, Sienese, active 1315–30s), Tempera on panel; Overall 15 x 22 1/4 in. (38.1 x 56.5 cm), painted surface 13 1/2 x 20 3/4 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Used with permission. Meditation by Father Simeon.
