OSF Reflection: Holy Thursday

 

What an extraordinary day we "celebrate" today as holy. What events transpired in the earthly life of Jesus, all of these so unexpected in many ways on this day.  Holy Thursday has been and will be a very special one for me.  My first and yet very clear memory of this day is as a teenager when this liturgy was first celebrated in English.  How unusual, the washing of the feet of the apostles and the 24-hour exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, the body of Christ at OLA Church in Brooklyn, NY. This memory is so vividly recalled and that after 60 years.

 

Since becoming a Franciscan Brother, I have heard, seen and experienced another essential aspect of the body of Christ.  As Pope Francis would name this "the other".  St. Francis at the end of his life dictated a memorial--testament for the fraternity.  "The sight of the leper made me nauseous.  God in His mercy led me among them and I practiced mercy."  The mercy of God.

 

If you ever go to the Franciscan sanctuary of Greccio, Italy, it is the place where the Christmas Crib, the Incarnation of the Very Son of God, is remembered. Yet in the upper church there is an enormous wood carving of the ministry of the brothers who lived there. They cared for the "the other" the lepers, the most despised and rejected people of the age.  In that very place the prayer--the spiritual and the material--the wounded, both the body of Christ.

 

St. Clare is remembered by her sisters for her care of the ill nuns and the washing of the feet of the begging sisters at their return from their quest. Yet, of equal import, is the fact that San Damiano church, already a place of healing in pre-Franciscan days became a center for healing for the local populace. Clare with a prayer--the spiritual and an anointing --the physical could heal a person in need.  Two of the stories remembered there are of a boy named Mattiolo and a friar named Brother Stephen.  Mattiola in danger of hemorrhage because of a pebble lodged in his nose and Brother Stephen who was mentally ill were healed through the ministry of Clare. They too were "the other".

 

Today as we celebrate the institution of the Holy Eucharist and the priesthood at the last supper, let us remember that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples also the body of Christ. The Franciscan spirit is both Eucharistic and Gospel oriented.  As the saying goes" hearts to God and hands to others. 

     

"I have done what is mine to do, may Christ teach you what is yours to do." St. Francis

(Thank you, Brother Tom Barton, OSF, for contributing today's reflection.)