Holy Thursday Is Not Just About Remembering Jesus and Feet

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Where is the rest of Holy Thursday hiding?

Where is the rest of Holy Thursday hiding?

The stark Francis style of Holy Week papal observance is all about deletion and de-emphasis in the name of corporal works of mercy.  Holy Thursday and the Catholic Rites of Our Lord’s Last Supper are mainly about the Blessed Sacrament, the priesthood, and the Mass itself.  But for Pope Francis it’s about service, service, service.

In other words it’s all about the feet.

Go to a jail, not a church, and smell like sheep!  That’s wonderful true, but it’s not Holy Thursday is it?  That’s because it leaves a lot of important Catholic things out, priceless heavenly things that Our Lord gave us.

It’s troubling to find the Catholic media falling in line too.

When I was growing up, like a lot of families, mine had one of those small, cheap Kodak Instamatic cameras. You used those flash bulbs that looked like ice cubes…and got these little square pictures back from the drug store when you had them developed. My dad must have taken hundreds, if not thousands of pictures with that camera. I never appreciated them until years later, after I was grown, and my parents had died, and we were going through their things and we found all these pictures. Boxes of them, curled and faded. But there they were – life, captured by Kodak. Memories you can put in a shoebox.

We need that. We want something of the person we love to outlast them, and stay with us.

We want to remember them.

So photos help us to remember the ones we love.

And remembrance is at the very heart of what we celebrate this evening. But Jesus didn’t leave us photographs in a shoebox. He left us something better.

He left us Himself.

Paul’s letter to the people of Corinth is the earliest account ever written of the Last Supper. It pre-dates, even, the gospels. It is so close to the original event, that its words are part of our Eucharistic prayer, spoken at every mass, at every altar, around the world. The words that created the Eucharist are the beating heart of our Catholic Christian belief.

And through it all, one word leaps out at us.

Remembrance.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Jesus is saying: This is how I want to be remembered.

So, instead of photos, Jesus left us Himself in the Eucharist and he wants us to remember him by the Blessed Sacrament?  Or Perhaps, since Our Lord’s real presence is much more than just a memory, Deacon Kandra is saying that Jesus wanted priests to remember to confect the Holy Eucharist in that way.  The memory is the Mass, not the Sacrament itself.  Either way, there is much more to the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Mass than remembering Jesus.

Next Deacon Kandra uses the Gospel of John to sort of change the Last Supper into mainly a message of service.

In the gospel, John doesn’t even mention the meal, or the institution of the Eucharist. But he finds something else for us to remember: Christ, the servant.

This of course is no reason to see Holy Thursday primarily in this way.

Deacons feel a special affection for this passage, because it is here that the diaconate, really, is born — in Christ’s extraordinary act of service, the washing of his disciples’ feet. Often, you will see emblems for the diaconate that include the image of a basin and a towel. It refers to this specific passage. And it is a reminder that we are called to serve – to wash one another’s feet, in humility and in love, just as Jesus did.

But is the meaning in Jesus’ act the same for lay people? Isn’t there something in it about bishops, priests, and deacons–something uniquely apostolic?

But it is not just the ordained who are called to this. It is all of Christ’s disciples. All who sit at His table and share in His body and blood.

All of us.

“You ought to wash one another’s feet,” Jesus says. “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

In other words: remember what I have done. And do this, too, in remembrance of me.

So we go from family photos, to the Mass, to the Eucharist, to the Priesthood, down to lay people helping each other; then to cap it off we hear the words of consecration used in a way that could apply to any single act of Christian mercy.

Doesn’t something strike you as odd about that? It reminds me of what Pope Francis warned yesterday, when he claimed:

“If we approach Holy Communion without being sincerely willing to wash one another’s feet, we do not recognize the Body of the Lord?”

Do the Blessed Sacrament, or Mass, or the priesthood have no power or value intrinsic to themselves, or do these things only matter if we wash enough feet?

Is is just all the same this Holy Thursday?

 

Saint Cesar Chavez? Planned Parenthood Agrees

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Patron Saint of Unions and Planned Parenthood

Patron Saint of Unions and Planned Parenthood?

You can’t deny the fundamental fact that the evil Left loves Pope Francis.  Why not?  He promotes most of their goals – as did many of his new saint causes.  Was Cesar Chavez very religious?

SAN JOSE — Family members of labor leader Cesar Chavez led a march in his honor Saturday through the neighborhood where he once lived, and some supporters also used the birthday commemoration to revive a movement to make Chavez a Catholic saint.

Was it a procession or a ‘march’?  Isn’t San Jose where they just got a new FrancisBishop?

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“This is the beginning of a campaign to canonize Cesar Chavez,” said Rudy Chavez Medina, a nephew of the legendary California activist. “When you look at Cesar’s life — and all the lives he touched — that’s a miracle.”

Is that going to be the miracle?

Laying out a detailed case for Chavez’s canonization was the Rev. Jon Pedigo, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, whose proposal was met with surprise and elation from some veterans of the United Farm Workers movement.

The process of officially declaring someone a saint requires a long, complicated investigation by the Catholic Church, usually to prove that the person miraculously cured physical ailments. But Pedigo said it can begin with a popular movement.

It “can start anywhere in the world, in his birthplace in Yuma, Arizona, or the place where we believe his call came from, here in San Jose,” Pedigo said. “It’s a matter of where do people really want to organize around the question of sainthood.”

Is this about finding devotion to a saint and evidence of miracles, or just organizing for social action?  Will this be the first ‘Patron Saint of Union Organizing’?

The sainthood campaign brought new energy to the annual San Jose event celebrating the life of Chavez, who died at age 66 in 1993 and would have turned 88 on Tuesday. Monday is a state holiday in his honor.

After a service at the Guadalupe Church, about 100 people, led by the labor leader’s siblings, nephews and nieces and a host of local politicians, began marching from McDonnell Hall, where Chavez gathered farmworkers in the 1950s.

“Here in East San Jose, one of our own community members raised the consciousness of our whole nation,” said Mayor Sam Liccardo, sporting a white guayabera shirt for the occasion.

He’s a consciousness-raising saint even the mayor can love.  Guess who else loves Chavez?

“Planned Parenthood shares César Chávez’s belief in fair treatment for everyone; we believe that all women and their families deserve the highest quality of affordable health care no matter who they are and where they live – no matter what. We know that health disparities remain a serious issue that is undeniably linked to poverty, lack of access, racism, sexism, and discrimination in all of its forms. As we continue to be inspired by César Chávez’s legacy, we know that these structural inequalities can only be changed through collective action – that’s why we are committed to working together with our partners to break down these barriers and to transform our world from one divided by disparities to a world united by health equity.

“The Affordable Care Act has provided millions of Latinos with access to critical services and allowed us to make significant strides toward better health care outcomes for all, but there is still much work to be done. We know that enrollment was only half the battle. Now that many Latinos have insurance for the first time, we are committed to making sure that they know what they can do with it, and of course there are still a significant number of Latinos who remain uninsured, many of whom are undocumented. We honor César Chávez’s memory by continuing to provide and advocate for services that allow people of all ages, races, and walks of life – regardless of immigration status – to reach their fullest potential.”

So, Planned Parenthood is filled with esteem for the labor-leader saint.  I guess a life of service can be a lot like ‘advocating for services’, and even though there isn’t a word about Him in either of these testimonials, we all know Jesus was all about service!

 

 

 

 

Register Fires Pat Archbold: EWTN Formally Joins FrancisChurch

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Some call this 'Christian Unity'

Some call this ‘Christian Unity’

Pat Archbold has been fired from the National Catholic Register.

Ever since Francis became Pope the media world has become a frightening virtual reality. First the Register started apologizing for the Pope’s anti-Catholic attacks. Then they started attacking Catholics themselves. Last month they joined two dissident rags in a liberal political move which backfired, of course, in their faces. Now this. They release their best and most powerful writer; perhaps the only one that didn’t need the job and could still tell the truth.

I got to write for the Register for five years and now I don’t anymore. It was never gonna be a lifetime appointment. Any money I receive from writing is essentially inconsequential to my family as I have always had another primary career. I got into writing because I love my faith and the Church. It is that simple. I always just wanted to write what I thought about what was happening in the culture and in the Church and I wanted to say it the way I wanted to say it.

The sad thing is that this is EWTN’s most faithful outlet. Remember how amazing and miraculous that network once was?

For a while that was understood, accepted, and even appreciated by the Register. For the past 2 years, that has increasingly not been the case. That shouldn’t be a surprise to many. There was no sense in me changing since my reasons and need for writing had not changed. But obviously some things changed, as we all know. I knew what I was doing and I understood well the current mood. I didn’t change because I didn’t want to. But it is their newspaper and they get to choose what they want to pay for and publish. That obviously was no longer my writing.

In a strange way, I am relieved. It feels more honest now. No more me jumping through hoops and worrying about every word or topic choice. And I am sure some folks who had to deal with me during an increasingly tense process are equally glad to be rid of me.

He did have to jump through the hoops for a couple years. The problem is he couldn’t stop his message from getting out.

The Christian example here is in Archbold’s consistency.  He didn’t bend.  They did. “There was no sense in me changing since my reasons and need for writing had not changed.” Pat was writing out of love for Christ and the Church, NOT for money, so he had no need or desire to compromise!

My question is, “Why is the entire planet, including all the Catholic press, being paid to do Francis-Hype?”  Is perhaps the entire planet up to something holy and that’s why they care so much about the Church?