Humility and Charity We Need - Holy Thursday(2025-04-17)

“A new commandment I give you: that you love one another as I have loved you”. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

1. Dear friends, this evening's liturgy shows us 2 events that seem to have nothing to do with each other: the washing of the feet and the institution of the Eucharist and the Catholic Priesthood. These 2 events show the 2 virtues that are only found in the Catholic religion, because they are impossible to practice if one does not live by the grace of God and the Eucharist: the washing of the feet shows humility; the Last Supper, charity.

2. What does humility have to do with charity? Why did Jesus first wash their feet and then institute the Blessed Sacrament of the altar?

3. The things that God does are not only good but also ordered. St. Thomas says that charity is the root of all the other virtues. And Our Lord says that all the commandments are summed up in the law of charity: to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, even humility is animated by charity. Therefore, Our Lord should have instituted the Eucharist first before He washed their feet. But why did he do it the other way around?

4. Because Our Lord knows all of us better than any of us. Both from a theological point of view and from a psychological point of view, Our Lord could not have done better.

5. Grace and charity come together. If one is in grace and lives by it, it means that he has a love of friendship with God with which he loves God above all things. Because of the original sin that we all have, there can be imperfections in this love of friendship, hence the venial faults that we commit from time to time, and even the Saints have not been free from them.

6. But what is sin, especially mortal sin? It is a breaking of God's law, yes of course. But what law is it? The 10 commandments, yes, I agree. But doesn't the law boil down to love of God and love of neighbor?

7. That is why all sin is, in the end, to love something more than God. And when you set your heart on something, it is because you want it for yourself. Jesus knew what he was saying when he said “where your treasure is, there is where your heart is”.

8. That is why what separates us from the love of friendship with God is none other than self-love. Self- love is the passion which, in order to satisfy itself, exaggerates our dignity, our merits, our perfections and capacities, and to this end exaggerates even our needs. Self-love is the soul of pride that pushes us: either towards pride that makes us despise our neighbor and victimize him; or towards false humility by which we make ourselves victims in our own eyes. Whether it is pride or false humility, the victim is one’s own self.

9. These two loves are contrary: charity, which is the love of friendship with God, goes so far as to despise oneself; self-love goes so far as to despise God.

10. And the human heart cannot have two loves, especially if they are contrary. That is why Our Lord prepares the human heart with humility, for in order to receive the love of God, it is necessary that the contrary love, self-love, be removed from the heart itself.

11. Humility, by making me see what I am, not according to the eyes of my self-love, but what I am in the eyes of God, humility mortifies self-love and makes it possible for the love of friendship with God, charity, to possess our heart.

12. Now we understand why humility has to prepare the way for charity to take possession of the human heart. Now we understand why the Old Testament law of servitude came first before the New Testament law of love. Now we understand why Jesus first had to wash their feet before giving them

his Body and Blood-because the Apostles, because any baptized person, can only recognize the unparalleled Love of the Redeemer through such humble things as a small piece of bread, if self-love has been mortified in the heart of the baptized person.

Therein lies the relationship between humility and charity. Only humble souls see the need to live by the Holy Eucharist. And among those who receive Communion regularly, only truly humble souls whose self-love is mortified benefit from the fruits of Communion. Why? Because only when the contrary love is mortified can He who is Love by essence work in the human heart.

When charity no longer encounters any obstacles in the soul, some of the whys and wherefores of the Eucharist become comprehensible to the soul. For example, why did Jesus have to give himself and stay with us in this way?

Now the soul sees what the Love of God is, what the Eucharist is, and why it must reciprocate. Now the soul understands why God must give Himself: because it is proper of love to give. And it is proper of perfect love to give itself, that is why God gives Himself to us. He does not wait for the next life where we will possess Him face to face; in this life He is already “anxious” to be ours.

And now the soul also understands why God gives himself in this way: because it is proper of love to give himself to those who are like him. That is why one must first be a child of God before one can partake of the Lord's Supper. And that it is also proper of love to give itself so that there may be greater and greater likeness.

That is why God gives Himself, because He is Love; He gives Himself Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, because it is proper of Perfect Love to give itself without reserve. The more perfect the love, the more it gives and the less it asks. This is true not only for God but also for us.

 

And that is why God gives Himself as a piece of bread: so that He may assimilate us as long as we let Him and as long as we assimilate Him as well. For it is proper of love to seek greater similarity between those who share the same mutual love.

 

And why does God teach us all these things proper to love through the Eucharist? Because He knows how we are and who is the only one who can make us happy: Himself, God our Lord. And in this life we can only achieve it with charity, with the love of God.

And since He also knows that self-love, however mortified, will always seek to make us forget the Love of God, that is why God gives Himself to us as a mere appearance of bread—to force us to humble ourselves and thus keep self-love in chains, as long as we cooperate.

For the great St. Thomas Aquinas to have been able to understand all this (in the hymns Adoro Te and Pange Lingua that we will sing in a little while), great purity of heart is necessary, purity of all contrary love. The truth is that these truths are unattainable to every type of studiousness and to every type of intelligence that does not have a pure heart as its driving force. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” And to be able to see God in a piece of bread, it takes great purity of heart.

Now we ask ourselves: if charity is already in the heart, so is the work of humility already finished? No, not at all. Because in this life, where we do not yet see God face to face, the love of God is to be practiced with our neighbor who belongs to God as much as we do, and whom we can see face to face.

For the one who has self-love in his heart, the Christian life consists of living avoiding sin, which is very difficult. And no matter how much he obtains a doctorate in theology, he will never be able to understand how is it possible that the yoke of the Lord is easy and His burden is light. But he who lives in charity because he lives loving God, the commandments do not become a heavy burden for him—he lives by them without even trying. This is why we understand what St. Augustine says: “Where there is love, one no longer works (in the sense of forcing oneself ); and if, by chance, there is indeed work, there is no more fatigue.”

As Our Lord said: “By the love you have for one another, the world will know that you are my disciples.”

fr. Fedei Ferrer