Living Bread

Holy Thursday. Fr John Farrell explores St John’s profound vision of a eucharistic life.

The Light of the World which shone so brilliantly at the feeding of the five thousand in Galilee has now shrunk to a pool of light in an upper room in Jerusalem. And the forces of darkness are growing stronger, encircling and invading. ‘And Judas went out. And it was night.’

St John dedicates almost a quarter of his gospel – five chapters – to presenting the actions and teachings of Jesus at the Last Supper. It is obviously magnificently important. Indeed, these chapters act as the interpretive discourse for the significance of the events of the Passion on the next day. The foot washing itself is a symbolic parable and prophecy of his ‘laying down his life for his friends.’

Yet within those five chapters there is no account of the institution of the Eucharist. In chapter six of his Gospel, after the feeding of the five thousand, St John gives us a profound meditation on Christ in his eucharistic sacrifice as the Bread of life. But here it seems that at this point John is concerned to gives us Jesus teaching us how to live eucharistically. How to live out from the Eucharist. Hence, we have, ‘I am the vine you are the branches,’ You must bear fruit that will abide, he tells us, and without my life flowing through you, you can do nothing. And throughout there is the theme of the indwelling of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the consecrated, eucharistic, Christian. In the last chapter we are consecrated into the sacrifice of Christ and his final prayer is that ‘the love with which you love me, Heavenly Father, may be in them and that I may be in them.’ In the washing of feet, which we celebrate tonight, he tells us. ‘I have set you an example, that you should also do as I have done to you.’

Is this, the Lord’s Supper/the ‘Last’ Supper, an ending or a beginning? At the end of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses completing the forty years Exodus journeying in the wilderness looks out from Mount Nebo in a pagan land. He sees before him the Promised Land where Joshua/Jesus will lead the People of God through the river Jordan to a land flowing with milk and honey. He has taught them how to live out their communion and mission as the People of God. So, Jesus from the vantage point of this upper room sees, over the dark waters of his Passion, communities of disciples of every nation and language who will lead baptismal and eucharistic lives. Men, women and children who will embody his risen presence and transfuse his recreating forgiveness and the mercy poured out by his sacrifice. The gift of his own Spirit, the Spirit of God is promised to them to enable them, to guide them and to comfort them.

The poignancy in the words and actions of Jesus at this supper is that these are given to us in his last moments of freedom. And yet here there is a tranquillity and cherishing calmness before the violence and cruelty that is to come. Read prayerfully, we hear our Master’s voice and see him most clearly, our Good Shepherd freely and lovingly laying down his life for his flock. There is, in the quiet words of these chapters, an intimacy between disciple and Master which crosses all the generations and all the continents. ‘I no longer call you servants; I call you friends for I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.’ ‘I have said these things to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.’ ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’

In the evening liturgy, having received the Eucharist, we process with a dignified, reverential beauty to the altar of repose, to the stillness before the storm, to the garden of Gethsemane. Having prayed for a while we drift away to return for three o’clock on the Friday.

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8,11-14 | 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 | John 13:1-15

Image: The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)