2025 Triduum Part I: Healing our Communion

Mass of the Lord’s Supper                                                                              April 17, 2025
Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Lk 22:15). Jesus says that in Luke’s Gospel, but I’m saying it too. We aren’t just remembering something, we are entering into it. Tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday, we are participating in a continuous liturgy that truly makes present the most important event in all of time and space. Entering into that reality with you is not just a nice addition to us as parish and pastor… it helps define our relationship. Sharing in this Triduum, this triple liturgy with you, my people, is the sign that I truly belong here. Though this place has felt like home for a few months now and though there is still room for growth, this is the time of year that most says to my heart, “these people… I am theirs and they are mine.”

It’s my custom to celebrate this Paschal Triduum with a series of interrelated homilies. Tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday will be a three-part reflection on a key theme. This year, the focus is “healing.” We will reflect on how passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus heals us. It heals us as a community – tonight’s focus. It heals us in our souls – tomorrow’s focus. It heals us in our bodies – Saturday’s focus. So, what does it mean to say Jesus heals our community?

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” is not Jesus’ way of saying he just likes a good meal with friends. This is God speaking to a broken and divided humanity. The Passover is not just a meal, it’s the defining moment of the Israelite people. “Why is this night different from all other nights?” A child asks this question during a typical Jewish seder meal, the Passover meal. The answer to that question is that tonight – the Passover – is the night God fulfills his promise to make us a people, a nation, a community.

Ever since the sin of Adam & Eve, human beings have been divided; divided from God, divided from each other. Cain & Abel, Noah & the flood, the Tower of Babel, Isaac & Ishmael, Jacob & Esau. Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and makes of them a nation, a “people holy to the Lord” (Dt 7:6). Not a collection of individuals holy to the Lord, but a people. They are not freed and brought into a covenant as individuals, but as a whole people. To be reconciled to God requires us to be reconciled to the people of God.

This is what so many churches get backwards: they think community is the result of saved individuals who get together. But that is just not who God is. The Trinity is not the result of a God deciding to be Three Persons. Three Divine Persons in One God has always been the case. God creates humanity by saying “let us make.” He creates mankind in the image of God, male and female. God exists as communion before time begins. God creates humanity in a state of communion and the entire point of the story of Adam naming the animals is that he does not name himself until he sees Eve. Marriage is the primary natural example of communion, but the goal is the supernatural communion with God and all humanity.

So, to be saved is the result of entering into communion. Jesus saves his bride, the Church, and saves us by incorporating us into his bride. To heal us from sin, to save us from death, to open the path to eternal life, Jesus has to draw us into communion with himself and each other. That’s why he “eagerly desires” to eat the Passover with us. That’s why he commands his disciples to “do this in memory of me.” It is this gift that heals not just individuals, but a community.

This communion is not superficial, either. It’s not the apostles pretending to get along. It’s not us just avoiding conflict. No, authentic communion is hard because it leaves us vulnerable. It is because of his friendships that Jesus is betrayed by Judas. Jesus could have been a lone wolf, solo hero and avoided the whole mess. But he didn’t. He fostered a communion with his apostles that left him vulnerable and ultimately cost him his life. But he did it anyway. Why? Because that’s the point.

To show us this, on the very night of his betrayal, he demonstrated for us what community is, what communion looks like. The Eucharist is called “communion” for a reason. This communion cannot be superficial. It has to be honest and true. To receive the Eucharist, to receive “communion” in a state of mortal sin does not help us because it becomes a lie, pretending to be in communion while wounding it. Judas receives communion wrongly, is immediately possessed by the Satan the divider, and then goes outside into darkness. To pretend we are in communion when we’re not only serves the father of lies.

Which is why Jesus does something else, first; something I’m about to imitate. He washes his disciples’ feet. Simon Peter says, “you will never wash my feet,” which gives Jesus the chance to explain why this matters: “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” So, Simon Peter suddenly wants a whole bath. But what does Jesus tell him? “Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over.”

In other words, you’ve already been baptized. You don’t need another baptism, you just need to wash away the dirt you’ve gotten on your feet after your baptism. It’s a symbolic way of saying Original Sin is gone, old sin is gone, but you do need to wash away the sins you’ve picked up since your baptism. It’s a sign of confession. By washing their feet and telling them to wash one another’s feet, Jesus is teaching his disciples that communion with him, that true union in this Passover meal requires us to be reconciled to God and to each other.

Yes, it’s passages like this that back up our teaching on not receiving communion in a state of mortal sin. But this moment is also a lesson to us in what community means. It means trust. It means shared life experience. It means being vulnerable enough to be betrayed, but still being willing to forgive. Judas sadly does not accept this forgiveness, but the offer is there as Jesus washes his feet. Judas also heard Jesus command his disciples to wash one another, he had every chance to realize that his fellow apostles would have forgiven him too. They… we are expected to forgive even those who seek to kill us.

The healing of community, the healing of communion is central to Jesus’ mission. “Me and my Jesus” is impossible. I’ve watched on a few occasions as Christians leave their communities, hang onto faith for a little while alone, and then lose it altogether. Why? Because being healed in communion with others is a necessary part of being healed as an individual. Jesus cured lepers so they could rejoin society, he spoke of gathering lost sheep, he healed a paralytic because of the faith of his friends, he raised Lazarus from the dead for the sake of his sisters.

You need communion. You are made for communion. Heaven itself is communion. It matters more than literally every created thing in the universe. All the money, power, and pleasure in the world means nothing without communion. We live in a fractured world, an atomized existence of individuals using 10,000 conveniences to get by. Divided loyalties, excessive commitments, constant distraction. It’s not how human beings are meant to live! It’s not how Jesus lived. He spent 30 years living with his family in a small town. He spent the last three years with his Apostles… being with them Every. Single. Day. It wasn’t a once a week or once a month hangout session. It wasn’t the occasional getting together over a mutual hobby. It was meaningful shared life. Food and fun together, yes, but also mission together, suffering together, life-in-communion, not life-with-occasional-intersections. Meaningful in that it’s rooted in mission, shared in that we ought to share time and space and possessions.

How often do you share a meal with the same people? Once a day with your family? Once a week with friends? Once a month with fellow parishioners? I bet it’s less than that for most of you. It certainly is for me. But we’re so busy! We have so many things to do! School and work and sports and hobbies and politics and projects… so much. Do these things really matter? How many of them are truly a shared mission, a true purpose that flows from our communion with each other?

Jesus is literally the perfect man. He never sinned, never deviated from God’s will, never wasted a single second of his life. Was his life a frantic jumping from one activity to the next? No. Sometimes he spent long days hard at work… but almost never alone! Sometimes, he just lounged about telling stories and eating food. He had three years to do ministry and he spent the vast majority of it – nearly every day – with the same 12 people. He did things people might consider a “waste,” but was it? Of course not! Why don’t our lives look like his? Why do we act like we need to be busier that Jesus? Why do we choose stuff over people? Because our community, our communion is broken.

So, let him heal you… let him heal us. The fact that Jesus reveals the Eucharist at the final stage of his mission is intentional. Communion is the goal. The Eucharist isn’t just a fuel source to grab and go so we can get back to all the knick-knack, fiddle-faddle tasks that fill our daily life. It is both the source and the summit of a meaningful shared life. Why do we treat Mass like a consumer good to fit into our busy schedule? Jesus treats the Mass as the one thing that determines his entire life, much less his weekly calendar.

If our feet are washed by God in confession, if we wash the feet of and forgive one another, what kind of healing would that bring to our community? If we were willing step out of the rat race, to set aside the “American Dream” and try instead to live a meaningful shared life, what healing would that bring to the disjointed collection of broken and lonely individuals we so often are?

Honestly, I don’t know for sure what the answer to those questions looks like. But, it is because I want to find out that I say to you… that Jesus says to you, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you.” So let us eat it worthily together, and be healed.

Part II of the series can be found here.