Homily One on Great Thursday, After the Communion of the Holy Mysteries
By Saint Innocent, Archbishop of Kherson and Tauride
By Saint Innocent, Archbishop of Kherson and Tauride
Our Savior and Lord, having given His Body and Blood to the Apostles at the Secret Supper, did not add any instruction to it. What was given was higher than human words, and the mystery itself spoke for itself. I believe that even now, for those among us who have partaken of the Lord’s table not with their lips only, there is no need of instruction: for the most pure Body of the Lord itself teaches them, His most holy Blood itself speaks to them.
What does the Body teach, and what does the Blood say? One thing: Christian, remember the death of your Lord, undertaken for you, and do not betray Him by your life; think and act as He thought and acted; seek in everything the glory of the Heavenly Father; labor tirelessly for the good of your neighbors; struggle against vice and impiety; endure temptations and afflictions with courage; be ready, out of love for truth and righteousness, to carry the cross, and, if necessary, to go to the cross. This is the voice of the Body and Blood of Christ. From the Secret Supper the path leads straight to Gethsemane and to Golgotha.
So, brothers, not only He, our Savior, was born to “bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37), to do always the will of the Heavenly Father, to live and die in holiness: we all come into this world for the same purpose. Not only He had to enter into glory through suffering: “all who desire to live a godly life… have been and will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). There can always be Judases, who sell everything for silver, Caiaphases, reasoning that “it is better that one man should die for the people” (John 11:50), and who, in persecuting the innocent, think they are “offering service to God” (John 16:2); Pilates, daring to ask, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), and washing their hands to appear innocent of the blood of the righteous; Herods, wishing to see miracles and mocking those who work them. And the prince of darkness, who fought against our Lord — O that murderer from the beginning is always the same! - unreconcilable in malice, inexhaustible in cunning, tireless in attack.
Therefore, the true follower of Jesus can always, and must always, share in the sufferings of his Lord, strive for the truth, wage war against evil, and offer himself as a sacrifice to God and to humanity. And it is for this very struggle — constant and great — that strength is given to us in the divine food of the Body and Blood of Christ; in this consists the very essence of the New Covenant, bequeathed to us by the death of our Redeemer. Sacrifice for sacrifice! Life for life! Blood for blood!
We have eaten His Body: let our body also belong to Him; let it be a vessel of purity, a temple of the Holy Spirit. We have partaken of His Blood, poured out for us: let us not hesitate to stand even to the shedding of blood for His name, for the good of humanity, for truth and faith. We have received Him entirely within ourselves and have become one with Him: let us also give ourselves — ourselves, one another, and our whole life — to Him, Christ our God.
Whoever acts in this way will not know only by hearsay that Christ is in him and he in Christ: he will always be at the Secret Supper, and will not only be nourished by the “hidden manna” (Rev. 2:17), but will also become one who feeds the souls of the hungry. But whoever approaches the Lord’s table “without examining himself” (1 Cor. 11:28), and departs from it without reflecting on what he has received and why — such a person, even if he were to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ a thousand times, even if he tasted nothing but this divine food, will not have Christ within him. In such a person the divine Body and Blood are enclosed as in a tomb: the life-giving Body will rise again, but the tomb will remain a tomb. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
