To give us

All through his life Jesus is taking whatever is right to hand, whatever we humans have given him and has used it to show us the Father’s love. He took on the flesh of Mary his mother, he took the craft and the homely work of his foster father, he took the six empty jars standing by at the wedding in Cana, he took the bathing bowl and the towel, he took the bread and wine of the Passover meal—all of these he used to show us what the Father is, how deeply the heart of the Father is for us, and desires us.

And Jesus takes the essence of what it is to be human, our conditional nature, our bodily limitation, and does the same thing. Jesus shows his true power not by averting or preventing the events of his Passion, but by taking them as they came, transforming evil by love into permanent substantive good. We are taken up by this Eucharist, the memorial of his Passion, into Jesus’s body—ignorant, unforgiving, fearful and betraying as we are. Mingling in that space with the events of his Passion we are loved into our own transubstantiation into Christ. The body of our humiliation will become something glorious by the same power of love which raised Jesus from the dead, and which made the Passion a strange occasion of joy.

So we pray this night of our redemption, God of your goodness give us yourself, for only in you can we live, only in you have we all.

Alleluia! With prayer that you may have a holy and light-filled Easter.