Have the Wedding Garment of Charity - Holy Thursday(2024-03-28) 

Today our Lord Jesus Christ gave His New Commandment, the Commandment of Charity.

 It was already written in the Old Testament, in the book of Deuteronomy “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength” (Deut. 6:5). Our Lord explained that this is the very first Commandment (Mt. 22:38), since God deserves to have the first place in our life.

 It was also already written: “Thou shalt love thy friend as thyself.” (Lev. 19:18). Our Lord explains that this does not only apply to our friend, but to all our “neighbour”. Indeed, the Pharisees had added a second half to God’s commandment, and that second half was NOT from God, but from them. Our Lord says: “You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy” (Mt. 5:43). Our Lord corrects them and teaches: “But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you do more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:44-48).

 One wonders what could He add to that commandment. Yet, our Lord wants us to go even further than that! Tonight, after having instituted the Sacrifice of the New Law at the Last Supper, giving as nourishment of our soul His flesh and blood, the very victim of the Sacrifice He was about to offer on the Cross, our Lord Jesus Christ said: “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn. 13:34).

 It is not sufficient to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Indeed, too often people do not love themselves properly, that is, they do not wish for themselves the true goods of their soul. Their love for themselves is too earthly, too selfish, too worldly. This is not how we should love our neighbour. We should love ourselves and our neighbour as our Lord loved us. And how did He love us? Up to the point of offering Himself on the Cross for our salvation! If the Son of God Himself came down from Heaven to save us, and to save us by the offering of His life on the Cross, that means that salvation is a most important good, that we ought to desire, to long for, to want with the greatest determination, to value as the very goal of our life, the greatest good we can ever desire!

 Why is it so? Because salvation consists in the friendship with God, as an adoptive child of God; and that friendship is due to blossom into everlasting Life with God in Heaven. St Paul explains that to the Colossians: “Giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins” (Col. 1:12-14).

 My dear brethren, do we have that gratitude of which St Paul speaks? Do we appreciate the gift of God? We need to appreciate more that gift of God, both for ourselves and for our neighbour. That gift of God requires our consent: God will not save us against our will; He wants – and deserves – our love. Without it, we cannot receive that most precious gift. The person invited to the banquet of the king but who did not have the wedding garment of charity was “cast out into the exterior darkness, where there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt. 22:13)

 Now, if we really appreciate that gift of God, we must not lose it by sin! To fall back into mortal sin after having received that Gift of God, is a monstruous ingratitude to our Lord, who had shed His blood for our salvation. We should always have in front of our eyes, the eyes of our heart/mind, Jesus Crucified for us, as St Paul says to the Galatians: “O senseless Galatians, who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth, crucified among you?” (Gal. 3:1).

 Already in the Old Testament, Moyses commanded the Hebrews to have always in front of their eyes the deeds which the Lord did delivering them from Egypt: “This is what the Lord did to me when I came forth out of Egypt. And it shall be as a sign in thy hand, and as a memorial before thy eyes: and that the law of the Lord be always in thy mouth, for with a strong hand the Lord hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt” (Exod. 13:8-9). Now the deliverance from Egypt was a sign foreshadowing the deliverance from sin by the Sacrifice of the Pascal Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ.

 Now St Thomas Aquinas teaches that it belongs to the superiority of the New Testament over the Old that we not only have a sign of the Sacrifice of Christ, but the very reality of that Sacrifice with His Body and Blood in the Holy Mass. Hence how much more should we always have in front of our eyes Jesus Crucified, we to whom He gave to partake to His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist! If we keep Jesus Crucified always in front of our eyes, we shall not sin, but we shall grow every day in the knowledge and love of our divine Saviour. We will live, not we, but Jesus will live in us. (Gal. 2:20)

 But then, that love of God which we will have in our heart, this is precisely that which we want to see also in the heart of our neighbour: loving our neighbour as ourselves, we want that our Lord Jesus Christ be living in them as He is living in us. No one can truly love our Lord Jesus Christ without desiring that everybody around him also get to know and love our Lord Jesus Christ. This treasure – which has the promise of eternal life – the more you give it, the more you have it; so we have the duty to give it.

 But we encounter often the disdain of our neighbour if not their opposition: they often say: “you may have your truth, I have mine.” But this is not right, because we do not make the truth, neither do they: truth is something we learn, not something we make! When we open our eyes, we do not make what we see, it was there before we opened our eyes: we learn about it. And the same is true for every truth, especially about God. Neither the Catholic nor anyone else can make the truth about God, we learn it. And the Catholic religion is the true one because it is the one taught by God Himself, by the Son of God who is true God and true man. That truth, no one made: the faithful did not, the priests did not, neither the bishops nor even the Pope: it was taught by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself – and He proved it by the miracles and prophecies which set Him in a very unique manner in the whole history of the world: He is the only founder of Religion who was prophesised hundreds, nay thousands of years before His coming. And His miracles, especially His Resurrection, confirmed his teaching: it is the signature of God.

 Now the important thing is to have the humility of the intelligence, to receive the truth, not to claim to make it, or to change it or to adapt it to the modern times as the modernists claim. He who claims to make his own truth sets himself above the truth; he who humbly receives the truth is the servant of the truth. But, paradoxically, the one who claims to make his own truth by that very fact destroys the truth, because unless it is objective, it is not true, it is useless: if one does not know reality AS IT IS, he simply deceives himself. This is particularly true regarding God: if one does not know God as He is, pretending to make his own truth about God, one simply deceives oneself and does not know God, remaining in the darkness of ignorance. But if one humbly receives the truth of God from God Himself, then one truly knows God as He is, knowing the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

 That supreme truth is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one goes to the Father except by Me!” (Jn. 14:6). That truth is a treasure which we received from Christ through the Catholic Tradition, which did not change it nor make it, but which faithfully passed on that which it had received. Hence you understand the importance of Tradition. But that truth which you received, it is a treasure that you have a duty to pass it on – and for that, you need to study it, and to love it and to live it.

 We must not only pass on the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, but communicate also His Love. Knowledge without love is nothing: “if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2). Now the central mystery of our Faith is the mystery of Redemption: that Christ “loved us and delivered Himself for us” (Gal. 2:20). Preaching Jesus in truth necessarily requires preaching Jesus Crucified, as did St Paul: “For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23-24).

 We can do that only if we ourselves partake in the Cross of Christ. A pampered Catholic can hardly preach Jesus crucified! We must love our neighbour as Christ love us, that is, to the point of sacrificing Himself for our salvation. Hence St Paul says to the Ephesians: “Be ye therefore imitators of God, as most dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness” (Eph. 5:1-2).

 If we are willing to partake in the Sacrifice of Christ, following the example of our Lady at the foot of the Cross, then our efforts will be much more fruitful, both for our own progress in the spiritual life and for the extension of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ around us in our country and in the whole world, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Amen.

fr. Laisney