The Last Supper and Sweating Blood

In this Vesperal Liturgy we mark the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist.

Behind the Iconostasis while the Royal Doors are closed, the Priest also prepares the Reserve Communion for serving the sick during the coming year, to be placed in a small tabernacle to be carried around the neck to those in hospital or shut-in at home.

We are told and may speak of the importance of family dinners, the daily gatherings that become rarer in our age of digital and schedule distractions. But most important, infinitely so, is our presence at the table of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we were invited to supper with the President of America or the King of England, or with a billionaire, or even our boss, like them or not, we would prepare well and be on time and not miss it except for an absolute emergency.

But how cavalier we can become in considering the Eucharist during the year as almost an entitlement, an invitation to supper with He Who loves us more than anyone, and Who is our God and Savior.

How few come to Vigil when that is a required preparation for this dinner. How few come properly confessed, or attired in their best, and not in non-traditional unisex dress. How few may be observing regular fasting during the year, not avoiding meat and dairy and fish on Wednesdays and Fridays.

If we were visiting the King in a foreign land we would prepare properly according to local custom, and bow or curtsy and dress and eat appropriately for the court culture and the culture of a foreign country. How much more should we honor the Kingdom of God Jesus brings to us by making us kings and priests unto God, as Holy Scripture tells us.

The Gospel account of the Last Supper is a sober reminder of the centrality of this Church family meal to our lives and our year as Orthodox Christians. It includes rank betrayal by the lover of worldly comfort and power, as well as the total self-sacrifice of our Lord for us His followers.

After the Supper where He institutes the Eucharist, Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane. There we are told He sweats blood, a symptom of extreme distress. Metropolitan Antony Khrapovitsky of blessed memory, the founding first Hierarch of our Russian Church Abroad, said that Jesus’ distress in the Garden was due to His mourning over our sins. Hence the suggestion in Holy Scripture of His redemptive blood already flowing in the Garden, as in also the Last Supper beforehand.

In fact, Metropolitan Antony wrote of that agony in the Garden after the Last Supper as exhibiting a saving compassion by our Lord for us. When Christ self-emptying said of His Father, “Thy will be done,” that is central to our redemption, Metropolitan Antony wrote. While our founding hierarch’s exact wording has been critiqued for a distinctive emphasis on compassion reflecting his own lovingly pastoral nature, Orthodoxy does teach that Jesus’ redemption of us occurs on a spectrum or continuum from His Incarnation, His birth as a baby in a cave in Bethlehem, to the establishment of the Holy Supper and its aftermath in the Garden, to the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and indeed the sustaining of His Church by Pentecost and His promised coming again, and events such as His redemption of the Apostle Paul for his missionary work and writing most of the New Testament, and our Lord’s work in His New Testament fulfilling His earlier Theophanies to the Church in the Old Testament, all establishing for us the Kingdom of God in Israel His Church.

So the redemption that many heterodox will look for rightly on the Cross, which indeed is of course central to us as our standard of salvation and marker of His ultimate voluntary suffering for us, nonetheless properly also flows fully and richly in Orthodox Christianity through His love in these other events we commemorate in Holy Week as well, commemorated in the rites and mysteries of the Church. As our Church prayers say, for He is a good God and the lover of mankind.

Brothers and sisters, our Lord justly asks His closest followers, could you not watch with me for an hour, for they sleep. Walking with him in His Church through this Holy Week, fortified by the Gospel and our services in our Pentecost-sustained Tradition, let us like the Wise Virgins be awake at midnight, with lamps trimmed and full of oil, for this Holy Supper, and for every one throughout the year.

Glory to God fo all things!