SPEAKER_00: I need you tonight to focus, to center yourselves, to listen carefully.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because tonight is not a reenactment.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight is not a memory.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to understand that tonight you're in the upper room, not symbolically, not poetically, but really truly, you are there.
SPEAKER_00: The air is thick.
SPEAKER_00: There's tension you can't quite name.
SPEAKER_00: Something is about to happen, and they all feel it.
SPEAKER_00: The apostles don't fully understand, but they know that this night is different.
SPEAKER_00: And then he looks at them, not as a crowd, not as a group.
SPEAKER_00: He looks at each and every single one of them personally.
SPEAKER_00: And if you let this land, he's looking at you tonight right into your eyes in the same way.
SPEAKER_00: Because this night is the night when everything changes.
SPEAKER_00: This is the night when love takes a form that the world has never seen before.
SPEAKER_00: Not in words, not in ideas, but a body that's been given, blood that has been poured out, and God who goes and kneels.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to rush past that.
SPEAKER_00: God is kneeling.
SPEAKER_00: The one who spoke galaxies into existence now wraps a towel around his waist.
SPEAKER_00: The one whom angels worship now bends down before fishermen, before sinners, before betrayers, and he doesn't flinch.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't hesitate.
SPEAKER_00: No, he gets down into the mess and he begins to wash one by one feet that have walked away from him, feet that would soon run in fear, feet that belong to a man who would betray him for thirty pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: And he washes them anyway.
SPEAKER_00: That's the part we sanitize.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's easier to admire Jesus than to let him get that close.
SPEAKER_00: Peter understands this tension.
SPEAKER_00: He pulls back, Lord, you will never wash my feet, he says.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're honest, that is us too.
SPEAKER_00: We don't mind Jesus on the altar.
SPEAKER_00: We don't mind Jesus in a beautiful statue.
SPEAKER_00: We don't mind Jesus in an amazing stained glass window.
SPEAKER_00: We don't mind him at a distance.
SPEAKER_00: But when he comes too close, enough to touch the parts of our lives that we hide, the parts of our lives that we resist, Lord, not that.
SPEAKER_00: Not my past, not my weakness, not that relationship, not that wound, the mistake that I keep falling into, the sin that I keep happening over and over.
SPEAKER_00: But listen to what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Unless I wash you, you have no inheritance with me.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, unless you let me love you there, you will never understand what I am about to do.
SPEAKER_00: Because the upper room is not just about what Jesus gives.
SPEAKER_00: It's about how he loves.
SPEAKER_00: And how he loves is uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: It's personal, it's invasive.
SPEAKER_00: It gets into places we've learned to keep hidden.
SPEAKER_00: And then as if that weren't enough, he does something even more radical.
SPEAKER_00: He takes bread, ordinary bread, fragile, breakable, perishable.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, This is my body.
SPEAKER_00: Then he takes a cup, he says, This is my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Not poetry.
SPEAKER_00: This is not metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: This is the moment the universe shifts.
SPEAKER_00: Because God doesn't just love you from a distance, he gives himself to you as food.
SPEAKER_00: Fulton Sheen once said, the greatest love story of all time is contained in that tiny little white host.
SPEAKER_00: The God you cannot contain.
SPEAKER_00: The God that you cannot make himself small enough to control.
SPEAKER_00: God remains in you, which means this.
SPEAKER_00: Every time you receive the Eucharist, you're watching, you're not watching the Last Supper, you are in it.
SPEAKER_00: You're not remembering Calvary, you are standing at its edge.
SPEAKER_00: You are not near God, you are receiving God.
SPEAKER_00: And here's where I need to push you.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't say this clearly, we miss everything.
SPEAKER_00: The tragedy is not that people don't come to mass.
SPEAKER_00: The tragedy is that people come and don't realize who is here.
SPEAKER_00: We walk up, we receive the body of Christ and walk away unchanged.
SPEAKER_00: Samo, samo.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he lacks power, because we've become, we've learned to live in distraction.
SPEAKER_00: We've reduced the Eucharist to something familiar, routine, optional.
SPEAKER_00: But tonight Jesus shatters that illusion.
SPEAKER_00: He says, This is my body given up for you.
SPEAKER_00: Not given up for the world in general.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking in your eyes and saying, for you, personally.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's true, whether you believe it or not, then the question is no longer, do I get something did I get something out of mass?
SPEAKER_00: The question becomes, what am I willing to give in return?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Eucharist is not a spiritual comfort, it is a transformation.
SPEAKER_00: It's not meant to leave you where you are.
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us back to the Tao.
SPEAKER_00: Because right after giving them himself, he says something almost impossible.
SPEAKER_00: As I have done for you, you must also do.
SPEAKER_00: Not to admire, not to reflect, but do.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, if you receive me, you must become like me.
SPEAKER_00: Which means you don't get to stay at the table.
SPEAKER_00: You have to get up.
SPEAKER_00: You have to move towards the person you've been avoiding.
SPEAKER_00: You have to love the person who doesn't deserve that love.
SPEAKER_00: You have to forgive when it costs you something.
SPEAKER_00: You have to serve when no one is watching.
SPEAKER_00: Because love that stays comfortable is not the love of the upper room.
SPEAKER_00: And let me be even more direct because I know that you can handle it.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight Jesus steps right into your messiness, not to shame you, not to expose you, but to set you free.
SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't wait for the perfect moment.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't wait for you to be ready.
SPEAKER_00: He moves now.
SPEAKER_00: He kneels before you and he says, Let me wash you.
SPEAKER_00: Because what he offers tonight is not meant to be postponed.
SPEAKER_00: It's too powerful for that.
SPEAKER_00: It's too powerful to leave you unchanged.
SPEAKER_00: In a few moments I will wash the feet of twelve people.
SPEAKER_00: But don't watch it like a ritual.
SPEAKER_00: See it for what it is, a mirror.
SPEAKER_00: Because the real question is not whether I will kneel tonight.
SPEAKER_00: The real question is whether you will.
SPEAKER_00: When you leave this church, will you finally say, Lord, if you are willing to kneel and wash my feet, then I will go and kneel and wash others.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is the truth.
SPEAKER_00: The world does not need any more Catholic spectators, it needs witnesses, men and women who have been so changed by the Eucharist that they become Eucharistic, broken, given, poured out.
SPEAKER_00: So, my brothers and sisters, tonight you are in the upper room, the table is set, the towel is in his hands, ready to be tied around his waist.
SPEAKER_00: And he's looking at you right into your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: The only question left is this will you let him love you there?
SPEAKER_00: And will you love like that out there?
SPEAKER_00: Because when your life is laid bare before God, it will be measured by not by how safely you lived or how hard you tried to bend his will to yours, it will be measured by surrender, by whether you trusted him enough to let go and gave your life away in love.
SPEAKER_00: And in the end, only one thing will remain.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you allowed his love to shape you until you became love for his kingdom, or whether you held back and chose to do it your way.
SPEAKER_00: The choice is yours.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is waiting.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.