Maundy Thursday

Yesterday I visited with Joan Newman in St. Louis who used to be a nun before marrying my friend, Steve Newman.   She worked in the slums of Chicago and has a heart for Catholicism and the poor.  I could not wait to ask her about her reactions to Pope Francis and she was optimistically animated.  I said I heard he personally called the Buenos Aires newspaper and cancelled his subscription.   She said, "He is a Jesuit;  he won't be carried away by the trappings."   Good enough for me.

We talked about Maundy Thursday and I came home and looked it up.  Today is a celebration to commemorate the Last Supper where Jesus washed the feet of the disciples and said, "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another."   In that moment, he, like Pope Francis, threw out the old and began a new tradition of importance.   No  trappings of red shoes for the Pope, or Jewish law for the new believers.  Christ told them change was coming and needed to start in their hearts and they should replace an "eye for an eye" to a sense of love and caring for all people.

This is revelatory for me.   In a day when they are arguing the constitutionality of equality under the law for same-sex marriage and immigration and gun laws, and society is rapidly changing, I have wondered whether I should move on mentally as a professed believer.  I find a mountain of hope on this Maundy Thursday when Christ commanded his followers, who would soon be leaderless, to remember and hold on to his new commandment of love.   

This, my friend, is relevance.