On Holy Thursday we celebrate Christ's great gifts to us, but we also remember the betrayal of Judas and the cowardice of the apostles. On the same night that Christ goes to such extremes of love, human cowardice and betrayal also go to extremes. After Christ had given us - also to Judas - the greatest gift of all, his own body and blood in the form of bread and wine, Judas goes out to betray him at the place where Christ was meeting with his friends and with the greeting of a friend: a kiss. This is the sad story of humanity: the mixture of divine love and human betrayal. But divine love is stubborn; God does not give up, he continues to love us no matter how much we disappoint him.
At the Last Supper, Jesus gives us four priceless gifts: he gives us the Eucharist, washes the feet of his disciples, gives us the priesthood and the new commandment.
To understand the gift of the Eucharist, we must think of the love of mothers for their little children. A mother, after having washed her little son, and seeing him so beautiful, could say to him: "I would eat you." Love seeks union, also bodily. Why do we kiss? Because we seek physical union with that person. Christ loves us so much that he allows us to eat him. Love leads him to enter into us, even corporeally, to achieve a union that goes far beyond the kiss. He wants us to eat him so that we may love him.
Jesus also shows his love by becoming our servant. He, who is God, washes the feet of his disciples, he makes himself our slave. Once again, our mothers can help us better understand this love. While we should never treat our mothers - or anyone else - as slaves, mothers, in fact, freely become our servants. True love leads to radical service.
Jesus shows us his love by giving us priests. When he gave the Eucharist to the apostles, he said to them.: "Do this in memory of me".. He gave them the power to do what he had just done: to transform the bread and wine into his body and blood. He made them priests. Every priest is a sign of God's love, a sign that he wants to continue to nourish his people with himself, so that we may find life in him.
The last gift is the new commandment. At the Last Supper, Jesus said: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another."
It is a commandment, but also a gift. By commanding us to love, Jesus gives us the power to love. He does not make us simply passive recipients of his love; we can also be transmitters of it. Through God's mercy, we not only receive love, but we can also give it to others. There is nothing greater than to be loved and to love. These are the gifts we celebrate this evening.
