Homilies | Father Nathan

Father Nathan | Homily

Holy Thursday

Todays Readings:

First Reading — Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14

Responsorial Psalm — Psalm 116: 12-13, 15-16, 17-18

Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.

Second Reading — Corinthians 11: 23-26

Gospel Reading — John 13:1-15

Holy Thursday Homily

My dear people,

‘He made them, the vicars of his love.’

—St. Ambrose of Milan

My dear friends,

When I was celebrating mass last Christmas, I was extremely happy just because the whole church was full and I could witness you were all happy to celebrate Christmas. Above all its Christ’s birthday. Christ who is God has been born for us. I hope you might have remembered the little angel addressed to us stating

“Christ the child is born for you and for you alone”….

Today those words of an angel come true. Christ is born for you and he lives for you. He will continue to live among us. 

There are lots of names given to God. One of the names that I like is, “Emmanuel”. Emmanuel means GOD IS WITH US. Today that attribution comes true. I wouldn’t mind calling this day as the second Christmas.

On Christmas day Christ the savior and God become human. Today the human Jesus becomes God by being Emmanuel as God. 

People say that love is blind…. I firmly believe in it. One hundred percent. If you don’t believe in it, we need to learn from Jesus. Psalm 130 says

“If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand”

so as we all know, we are sinners in different degrees. 

It’s not that we don’t try to reach out to God to make a relationship and friendship with him. If we do, it means that God also takes the initiative and he pushes himself to create a relationship with us. He wants to be part and parcel of our lives. He wants to be immersed in our lives.   

That is what today’s feast is all about. 

How can God be part and parcel of lives, how can he be integrated into our lives and how can he be one among us??? 

It’s through the Eucharist. 

He wanted to live with us all the time, eternally.   Hence today he instituted the Eucharist. That’s one of the reason – the prime reason today’s feast get the limelight. 

Even in the Eucharist, he cannot do it all by himself. We read in sacred scripture Luke 9:13 when people were starving and Jesus wanted to feed them, he says to his disciples “Jesus said,

“You feed them.”.

To feed the world, He needs help from the world. He wanted human assistance and that is the reason he instituted the priesthood.

Today he Instituted the priesthood

He instituted the priesthood today, that the priest could celebrate mass and make Christ alive and present to the world. 

Since it’s a special day for the priests, I wanted to also pay attention to the priesthood. To me, PRIESTS ARE THE CHANNEL BETWEEN GOD AND HUMAN. It’s the priesthood that connects the human to God. I would say it this way. CHRIST IS MADE PRESENT TO THE WORLD THROUGH THE PRIESTS. 

What a great privilege that God would bestow to the priest as human, at the same time it also coupled with responsibility. Please allow me to share the wisdom of St. Norbert 

‘O Priest! You are not yourself because you are God. You are not of yourself because you are the servant and minister of Christ. You are not you own because you are the spouse of the Church. You are not yourself because you are the mediator between God and man. You are not from yourself because you are nothing. What then are you? Nothing and everything. O Priest! Take care lest what was said to Christ on the cross be said to you: “He saved others, himself he cannot save!”‘

That’s what the priesthood is. Please pray for me and all the holy priests of the world. 

Serve the World

The third important element of today’s feast is, to serve the world, the Lord chooses to be the servant. That’s how he wants his priests, ministers to be and all his followers as well. Hence today he went on his knee, washing the feet of the apostles. John 13:14 beautifully talks about

“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet”.

The lord sets an example to follow, to be humble and to be humble and TO BE HUMBLE LIKE HIM ALONE. He is the model to be followed.

That being humble has to be done out of love for him and that is the reason the lord gives the love command by himself 

“Love one another as I have loved” 

please remember the words of Jesus. He doesn’t want you to love as the world, as the world wants it; or to love you and as you wanted the world wants you to love you. He wants you to love one another as HE LOVES, as CHRISTS LOVES YOU. HE LOVES UNCONDITIONALLY. Period.

He doesn’t judge anyone, he doesn’t reject one. He forgives, accepts, and loves as we are… we are also called to love as he lives….

Let us praise God who is present in the Eucharist for His abiding presence. Let us pray for the priests who are anointed by the Lord that they would be faithful to the lord and the Holy Mother Church.

Let us also pray for each one of us that we the church would take the last commandment of Christ so seriously that we would love one another as he loves and learn to be humble like him.

 Amen.

Stay safe and be reassured that God is with you in this time of crisis and isolation!

Stay connected to others during this time through phone, email and social media.

Have a Blessed Week,

Fr. Nathan