maundy

Today, Maundy Thursday, is one of my favorite days of the religious calendar. Jesus is/becomes so human in his final hours, and, unlike the making of miracles or the damn near illogical parables, I can empathize with him. He is sad, scared, sure.

My grandmother and I went to Village Chapel of Bald Head Island for their service today, which was tenebrae.

We started with:

Celebrant: God is light, in whom there is no darkness at all.

People: Jesus Christ is the light of the world.

Celebrant: And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world.

People: And we loved darkness rather than light.

Then, John's account of The Passion was read, broken into 16 sections, extinguishing candles after each.

At the end of the service, we sat in darkness. (Well, we sat in the cloudiness of an impending thunderstorm, overlooking a marsh untouched by man.)

And I kept reading "And we loved darkness rather than light."

How many times in our lives do we choose darkness, whatever our darkness is, instead of our light? Do we love it? Crave it? Not know how to give it up, like our other Lenten sacrifice(s)?

And if we could learn to love light, how much better would we be, as individuals and as a group?

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"Maundy" comes from the Latin "mundatum," which means "command." Jesus commands his disciples to love one another after he washes their feet. It is his final request of them.

I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. By this shall the world know that you are my disciples: That you have love for one another.

Let us love light. Let us recognize each other's light. Let us love each other.