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Mass of the Lord’s Supper,
Cycle C
Sisters of St. Joseph
Motherhouse, Chestnut Hill, PA
March 28, 2013
The Power of Storytelling
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P.
Amato
Storybook Time
at the Library
Last
Saturday I was at the library and witnessed a children’s storybook time.
About
30 children sat in a circle around the reader who began by holding up the large
book and asking questions about the cover.
She
then paged through it and had them all look at the full page pictures, asking
more questions to quicken their imaginations and arouse their interest.
I
noticed how she spoke in an animated way with lots of pauses, and oo’s and
aha’s and my, my, my’s.
Soon
she had every child’s imagination and began taking them through their
experience of the story’s plot.
As
the hour came to an end and parents began arriving to pick up their little
ones, the children had been transformed by what they’d heard.
Like
the story-time at the library last week, tonight’s 3 readings are one
continuous story that yearns to draw us into it, not only in terms of our
understanding, but in terms of our actual experiencing it and living out of it.
A 3-Chapter
Story
Chapter
one of tonight’s
story is our hearing of the first Passover.
It is
the defining experience for Judaism and testifies to the truth that all women
and men are meant to be free and that God is concerned when they are not.
It
is the Passover of the Jewish people.
The
link to the second reading from Corinthians is that every Eucharist
is a celebration of the Passing-over of the Lord and that it is accomplished
definitively in the shedding of Jesus’ blood
Jesus
is the Lamb of God, whose blood marks, not the doorposts of the Hebrews in
Egypt, but marks us tonight for salvation.
When
we, the members of his body, become what we eat, we live the mystery of
deliverance that we celebrate.
And
if, like Christ, we are bread broken and consumed for others and wine poured
out for the thirst of the world, we witness that deliverance to the world.
The
Gospel tells
us to what degree we are to be “broken and given” and “wine poured out” for
others.
Washing
a guest’s feet was a gesture of hospitality and it was the work of the
household’s slaves.
Jesus’
washing the feet of his disciples, then, shows us a servant who handles our
humanity with love, despite our friendship or enmity with him.
Furthermore,
he asks us to follow his example: to serve one another, despite the dust and
smell and misunderstandings that life entails.
We
too have part with Jesus in the hospitality that his death and resurrection
offer all and washing each other helps us move from understanding to experience
Moving from
Understanding à Experience à Action
As
with in storybook time a good book is worth a recap: the 1st reading
of the Passover speaks of our need for liberation.
It
helps us understand our inclination to sin as well as our yearning for
deliverance
In
the 2nd reading we have Jesus as a model of our own Passing-over.
To
understand him as the lamb of the new Passover who offered his own body and
blood so I can eat, taste and assimilate what he has given of himself makes all
the difference in the world of my experience.
Finally,
the Gospel, as the lynch pin, the connector that completes the child in me
hearing that story to it becoming my story in enfleshed in my hands being
washed and then washing and drying the hands of another.
Conclusion
As
the parents in the library last Saturday came for their children, it is similarly
time for us to go, to go and to put into practice what we have heard and
believed with out own hearts.
It
will take the action of washing each other’s hands, the action of eating body
and blood in order to become the story of liberation we crave
It
is the story of liberation that God wants so much to give us and which we have
just received
May
we leave this “library” a different child of God from the child who sat down here
an hour ago!
