Dear priests
Brothers and Sisters
May the Lord give you peace!
I am moved, and at the same time with a heart full of gratitude, to celebrate this important celebration of Holy Thursday here in Larnaca for the first time as a bishop. Greetings with affection, Father Andrew Ahim, Father Andrew Verdote, Father Antaine Hamat, Father Francesco Di Palma, and best wishes for your ministry.
Let us celebrate today, in this celebration of Holy Thursday, the celebration of love. Jesus reveals to us the true face of God… yes, God is love. True love, given, delivered totally for us. Because he wants to be with us, and to be with us he makes himself bread, he makes himself Eucharist, and he loves us up to the cross. And he instituted the sacrament of love: the Eucharist. And here I would like to remember something very important. If we do not understand this well we risk losing the true and deep meaning of this celebration. Attention… Yes, attention with the concept, with the word: representative: representation. Here, the priest does not represent Christ. It represents someone who is not present. (Eg. I send someone to represents me in a meeting when can’t go). Instead, the priest does not represent Christ, because He, Jesus is here, with us. The priest acts in the person of Christ. The Eucharist does not represent Jesus. It is Christ… in every Eucharist if it makes present the event, the mystery of the cross. Mystery of love. Love of the cross… Saint Francis understood this. Two things in the life of Saint Francis reflected this reality: he could not hear the word “for love of God”, if someone asked something “for love of God”, he even gave his own habit. Then… Saint Francis loved priests, priests. And he said: if I meet an angel and a priest, I kneel at the priest’s feet. because only he, the priest can give me Jesus. Jesus Eucharist.
Brothers and sisters, this is the meaning of celebrating the Eucharist… it is celebrating our value. This is the meaning of Lent and Easter. It is the celebration of your worth. Your value is the cross of Christ… your value is the blood of Christ, your value is the body of Christ. And here we understand where is the source of our joy, our peace. If you seek something else, you seek joy out of it, you will always be dissatisfied….
The great risk is to live all this only in words. The great risk of living only the rite. Beautiful rite, beautiful liturgy and then…. Nothing changes. If we arrive at Easter Sunday the same as we were 40 days ago, when we started Lent, I am sorry, we really will not celebrate Easter. Brothers and sisters, the liturgy is not a theatre. Our faith is not theatre. Lent, Easter is not theatre of the life of Jesus. No, he is truly here, he is present in the community, in the divine Word, in the altar, in the priest, in the Eucharist. And he teaches us… teaches us tonight to wash our feet… to bend down and wash our feet.
No ministry of the Church can be separated from this action of Jesus: washing the feet. I am a priest to wash the feet. You are in the Church to wash your feet. And he Jesus is clear: if you do not let your feet wash, you are not in communion with him. Unfortunately, we easily forget this. The church reminds us every year. The Eucharist is the body of the Church. And by eating his body, you are transformed into him. And thus the community is returned to the body of Christ.
We are called to wash our feet every day. It is not easy to wash the feet of those who speak ill of us, it is against us. If you have understood the love of the Cross…. He will begin to forgive. I insist on starting in our families, from those who are closest. Let us not forget, the first Church is the domestic Church. And in the Church her body is alive.
Brothers and sisters, may this celebration, which now in repeating the gestures of Jesus, make room for him. And that the intercession of the Virgin Mary, of Saint Joseph, of the holy apostles, Saint Barnabas, we can celebrate Easter this year, truly with a new life…. Because he truly loves us with eternal love… love on the cross.