Crisis

The Church is going through a crisis the intensity of which we have never felt before.

How often in the history of the Church it seems those words or ones like them are proclaimed. Today we remember the moment that I believe was the worst crisis that we as a Church have ever endured. The Last Supper. The Church's unity was fragmented. Secular authorities were about to overcome us. Members of the Church were fleeing, were denying the faith, were actively betraying the faith. Indeed, things were about to get worse, the Church would reduce to a size so small that it was contained within the heart of Mary at the foot of the cross. It was at this moment that Christ showed us how to survive.

First, he knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. The servant leader: we serve God by serving the people He created. But he did not stop there. He celebrated the first mass, the lifeline of the faith, of our renewal of relationship with God. This is my body. This is my blood. No ifs. No buts. As the Holy Father has pointed out, we cannot simply by an NGO. We cannot just have horizontal relations. They must be framed by our immersion in our vertical relationship with the Lord.

But Christ was setting up our own personal means of survival too. He knew the weakness of St Peter, as he knows my weakness today. As he predicted Peter's denials, he must already have had in his mind that he would be reconciled on the shores of Lake Tiberias. Peter confessing to the priest.

Julian of Norwich sums it up with her famous phrase: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well"

I love you Jesus, my love above all things. 

I repent with my whole heart for having offended you.

Never permit me to separate myself from you again,

but grant that I may love you always

and then

do with me what you will.