MARCH 29, 2018
7:00 PM ORDINARY FORM (ENGLISH) MASS
For human beings, memory is the faculty of the mind by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.
While in the 21st century, we may joke about having a “hard drive” or “flash drive” up there, the actual neuroanatomy of human memory involves the hippocampus (a seahorse shaped section of the brain located under the cerebral cortex), the amygdala (almond shaped sections of the brain located behind the eyes), the striatum (located in the subcortical basal ganglia of the forebrain), and the mammillary bodies (a pair of small round bodies, located on the undersurface of the brain).
Together these assist in short term memory, long term memory, emotional memory, and sensory memory.
Of course, the complex physiological basis for human memory remains theoretical. For now, downloading your thoughts or uploading your memories remains in the realm of science fiction.
Today is Holy Thursday and we are here to celebrate the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper.
In the first reading, we hear about the Passover, which the Lord instructed the Israelites would “be a memorial feast for [them], which all … generations would celebrate with … as a perpetual institution.”
St. Paul speaks of the Last Supper, and Jesus’ own words: “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Yet this is more than a "Hail fellow well met,” or a passing thought of “Good old Jesus. He was quite the guy, wasn’t He?”
The remembrance we celebrate is an “anamnesis” – an act of higher remembering within the Eucharistic sacrifice. In the Mass, we pray the Eucharistic Prayer which remembers Jesus through an “anaphora” – a carrying back to that point in time when in the upper room, these events took place.
But this is more than a memory … this liturgical action is a re-presentation of the sacrificial self-offering of the Son of God to God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit … which collapses space and time … bringing us not only to the upper room, but to Calvary, and the tomb … and to all points of Salvation History – those places and times where God has intervened to save sinful humanity.
On Sunday, I spoke about that first part of today’s Gospel: “Jesus … loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” And how John’s Greek language word play connects Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper … with His final words from the Cross, “It is finished.” And finally in his old age John reveals to the early Christians how “perfect love casts out fear.”
And so, we see in Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection … the playing out of a perfect sacrificial total gift of God’s self … wiping away sin and fear and punishment.
At the end of the Last Supper – in the mandate of Christ (which is why today is sometimes called “Maundy Thursday” Jesus tells the Apostles … and us as well: “I give you a new commandment … love one another as I have loved you.”
What is new is that this love is total, complete, and perfect … a total gift of self, a complete sharing in the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity, and a perfect sacrifice to bring about the redemption of humanity, or creation, and of the entire universe.
As we approach this altar to receive the Sacred Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ: let us remember … let us be carried back … let us be raised up … through Him, and with Him, and in Him … through the perfect love of God … shown forth in this divine action.
Let us pause with the whole of creation … which stands still in this sacred moment … as the divine drama of reconciliation commences … and with bated breath awaits its consummation.
