Jesus got up from table and removed his outer garment. For a Hebrew man, the outer garment was a sign of his dignity as a free man. In divesting himself of it during the Passover meal, Jesus was assuming the condition of a slave. When he took flesh from Mary’s womb, He had already divested Himself of the cloak of His divine glory. Now, He was divesting Himself even of the humble dignity of His human condition.

Why does He do it? St. John tells us: He wanted to show how perfect His love was. Or as we say in the fourth Eucharistic prayer: He loved us to the end. To love means to give your all to the beloved, holding nothing back. The true lover loves until he is empty of everything. And Jesus gives everything, not just His cloak, not just His dignity, but His body and blood and water to the last drop. He gives His life, His Mother, His Spirit and, in some sense, even His Father for us and to us. The Father had put everything into His hands and He gave all He had received to us. The prodigal son squandered everything on sin; the only-Begotten Son squandered everything on the sinner.

As if to shake apathetic and cynical hearts across the centuries until He returns, He focuses the extravagance of His self-surrender to us in something as insignificant and humdrum as a crumb of bread and a drop of wine. A Catholic diplomat I once knew told me that he found the Eucharist disgusting. It reminded me of what Isaiah says of the suffering servant: “so disfigured did He look, he seemed no longer human.” The Eucharist is at once the genius of divine humility and a scandal to the proud. It is a permanent witness to the self-emptying of Jesus which the heart of the humble understands to be the heart of the cosmos. The humble self-surrender of Jesus can only find a welcome in the humble faith of the believer. Humility beckons humility. Only the heart empty of self, because hungry for Christ, can truly taste the bread which is full of all goodness, containing every delight.  And this is the Gift of all Gifts which Jesus longed to give us on the night He was betrayed. The Eucharist anticipates the Cross and communicates the Cross. It draws all time and space into the death and resurrection of Jesus, making it possible for all to be one in Him.

And that is who the priest is. He is the material agent of Jesus to propel His self-emptying across time and space. If he responds, the Lord will strip the priest of himself, will own him and, yes, will use him to draw to Himself those who are famished and parched until the real food and real drink of Christ’s flesh and blood satisfy them. The priest is not just a witness to Christ, which he must certainly be in his personal life; he is also and above all identified with Christ the priest as Head of the Body. And he is that for the sole purpose of serving the Body, of feeding Christ’s lambs with Christ’s truth in His Word, and Christ’s love in His Sacraments. His is a particular call and responsibility to be empty of self because Christ has first emptied him of himself in holy orders. And this emptiness is no loss to him but the sign and proof that he has found himself, in Christ.

With Christ, the priest is given into the hands of His people and kneels at their feet to wash them, in baptism and in confession. He is there to unite them in the Eucharist and in matrimony with Christ and His Bride the Church. He is there to strengthen them in confirmation and the anointing of the sick. Christ’s Word is his speech and discourse. From it, he learns to think and reason and discern how and what to decide. Into this truth he invests all the gifts of mind and heart he has been given for they no longer belong to him, but to Christ. He is not an oracle unto himself, but a voice conveying the truth of salvation spoken once and for all by Christ and articulated across the centuries by the teaching authority which Christ himself has given to His Church. It is this truth which sets free, in season and out of season. It is this truth which people have the right to hear to provide a light for their path as they try to negotiate the competing claims of the age. This truth is greater than all human knowing and opining. The thoughts of men are but a breath. The truth of Christ endures for ever.

On this holy night, with deep emotion and with deeper love, let us take our place alongside the Twelve, with grateful if uncomprehending hearts, with the desire to be filled by the emptiness of the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Son of Mary. For His humility is still our hope and His Eucharist is our certain guarantee that we will never be forsaken by that same, perfect love which He showed to the end. So, let us see Him raise from table, remove His outer garment and kneel at your feet.