When I announced my new appointment, I spoke to how I felt consolation to say “yes” after prayer before our Tabernacle at Corpus Christi, where on the front is carved the image of the washing of the feet by Jesus.
In his moving autobiography, Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt tells a story from his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. His mother had just given birth, and relatives sent five pounds to buy milk for the new baby. But his father, an alcoholic, took the money and was drinking it away in the pubs. Desperate, his mother sent young Frank to find him.
After searching in vain, the boy came across a drunken sailor asleep at a table, a plate of fish and chips untouched before him. Starving, Frankie took the food outside and ate it. Stricken with guilt, he went to confession and told the priest what he had done. When the priest asked why, Frankie explained that there was no food at home and that his mother was raging by the fire while his father drank away the baby’s milk money.
The priest was quiet for a long moment before saying softly:
“My child, I sit here, I hear the sins of the poor, I assign the penance, I bestow the absolution… I should be on my knees washing their feet. Go, pray for me.”
That simple moment captures the heart of Christian faith and of the Eucharist itself. Like the persistent widow in today’s Gospel who never gives up on mercy and justice, the priest in McCourt’s story shows what faith looks like when it becomes compassion in action.
At the Last Supper, Jesus gave us the Eucharist and then knelt to wash his disciples’ feet. In John’s Gospel, that gesture is the meaning of the Eucharist: love that humbles itself to serve. The Eucharist is not just something we receive but is something we live. Its rhythm is simple and demanding: receive, give thanks, break, and share.
Each Mass strengthens us to persevere in prayer, as today’s Gospel teaches, but also to persevere in service and to go forth and live the compassion we have received. It calls us to replace pride with humility, indifference with love, and self-interest with self-giving.
To be strengthened in this most personal manner through the Eucharist, first people must replace their pride in putting the world before Sunday Mass and be challenged in their indifference. To believe that any sport or rest or prayer at home or out in nature is a fair substitute for this sacred meal, is similar to saying prayer is a simple reading of a text. It’s thinking fast food is the same as a homemade meal of comfort.
God Bless,
