Maundy Thursday: "We must return every day into his death"

In catholicity and covenant today:

Take the Passion of Christ in S. Matthew or S. Luke, and merely look with all your eyes on one scene at a time.  Begin at the upper room;  see Jesus give himself away with his own hands to his Father and to his friends, in bread and wine that are his body and blood.  Go on to the garden, see him give himself again, and confirm his gift in the agony of prayer; see him, by standing to the truth of his mission, call death on his own head in Caiaphas's court and in Pilate's.  See him, half  flogged to death, wear that crown and that robe which assert the kingdom of God's will on earth through mockery and annihilation.  See him receive the cross on which he is to die, and see him die on it.  Then see if the overflowing mercy which unites you to him will not make something more of your giving yourself to God, if only for a day.  We must live one day at a time, but we cannot do that if we do not return every day into the life of Jesus, and above all into his death.


From Austin Farrer's sermon "Dying to Live" in Said or Sung.

(The painting is Georges Rouault Head of Christ, 1937.)