laudable Practice

At Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday, 17.4.25 1 Corinthians 11:26  “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” [1] Since Saint Paul penned these words, only a few decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper has been celebrated by Christians in a vast array of diverse circumstances. In ancient basilicas, grand cathedrals, and humble parish churches.  On battlefields, in prisons, and at hospital bedsides. In the face of bitter persecution; in the midst of secular indifference; and at the coronation of monarchs (most recently, the coronation of His Majesty the King).  In times of peace and times of war; in times of celebration and times of grief. In large, cosmopolitan cities, at the very heart of political, economic, and cultural life; and in small, quiet villages, very far from the centres of power. In each of these circumstances, in all of these circumstances, the Sacrament...

At the evening Eucharist of Maundy Thursday, 28.3.24 John 13:1-2, 30 “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.” As Jesus and the disciples gathered for the Last Supper, the darkness was gathering. It was, already, present in that upper room - and not only in the heart of Judas. At supper, Jesus would tell a boastful Peter, so sure of the strength of his faith, that he would, instead, betray Jesus that very night.  Jesus tells the other disciples that they will scatter, leaving him alone, abandoned. The writer of the Fourth Gospel powerfully captures this sense of gathering darkness in describing Judas leaving the upper room to undertake his act of betrayal: “He immediately went out. And it was night”. In our parish Lent book, Lent with the Beloved Disciple , Michael Marshall says, “turning his back on Jesus, the light of the world, [Judas] walked into the darkness” [1]. They all walked into the darkness: Judas, Peter, the other disci...

And there is no one grace in which Christ propounded himself imitable so signally as in this of meekness and humility; for the enforcing of which he undertook the condition of a servant, and a life of poverty, and a death of disgrace; and washed the feet of his disciples, and even of Judas himself, that his action might be turned into a sermon to preach this duty, and to make it as eternal as his own story. Jeremy Taylor The Great Exemplar , 'Considerations upon the Washing of the Disciples' Feet by Jesus, and his Sermon of Humility'. (The painting is Dirck van Baburen, 'Christ Washing the Apostles' Feet', c.1616.)