What an astounding reality! What a profound Mystery! We are fed by God. We remember what God has done for us through Jesus. In its simplest form, the totality of this mystery says to us what we hear so often from John, the Evangelist: “God is Love.” And we are invited –rather, commanded—to do likewise: Love God, love neighbor. Such is our way of sharing in the very life of God. Sometimes the only language for responding to such mystery is the language of silence.

And we will be entering into that kind of silence in these days, remembering with that dynamic, layered sort of memory so different from mere reminiscence remembering “How you, O Christ, loved us to your death.” And in our remembering, we will realize once again that the “every-day-ness” of our lives (what Kathleen Norris has dubbed “The Quotidian Mysteries”, i.e., everyday mysteries) flows from the fullness of this Paschal Mystery. Here in this profound recollection, we will encounter once again the source of meaning for us believers in our everyday mysteries, for all that we do, all that we are, our loves, our longings, our lamentations and our laughter – our lives.

Sometimes we meet people, either actually or vicariously, who are particularly helpful to us in seeing the connection between our living of the paschal mystery through our “quotidian mysteries” and Christ’s. One such person for me I have recently met in a book entitled, “A Life Poured Out”. I know that much of my reflection tonight comes from its inspiration. “A Life Poured Out” is a biography, the life of Pierre Claverie, an Algerian from a Family of 4 generations in Algeria. Born in 1938, ordained a Dominican priest in 1965, made a bishop and assigned to the diocese of Oran, Algeria, in 1981, He was assassinated at his residence there in 1996. At the time of his death, Algeria had deteriorated into a country of chaos, confusion, violence and hatred. This was very different from the situation there in the days of his childhool and youth. During those years, he seemed to live an almost “charmed life,” and he was by all accounts, a charming very likeable youth who retained that charm throughout adulthood.

While he was studying in France in preparation for ordination in the Dominican Order, Algerian nationalism emerged very strongly and grew to a revolution against France, the colonizer. Claverie became passionately involved in the politics of it all, which for him meant much study, reflection, discussion and debate, and prayer.

At the age of 20, he had what could only be called a conversion experience. It became very clear to him, as though a light went on in his very soul, that those happy childhood days in his beloved homeland of Algeria had been day entirely exclusive of “Algerian Algeria”. He had grown up in an enclosed world, a sort of French Algeria. He came to use the expression “colonial bubble”: to describe it. And he spent the rest of his life seeking to free himself from the ramifications of that bubble. As he said himself,”My perception of racism became very acute. . .” And from then on the question of “the Other” became his fundamental question. How much we have to learn from him, I think, in all of our relationships, and especially in the social and pocitical relationships of our oun country at this time when racism, sexism and other isms keep rearing their ugly heads.

For me, the inspiring life of Pierre Claverie, OP, is in itself a homily on the Paschal Mystery. Once he was enlightened by the Spirit regarding the exclusivity of his early life, he turned all of the many gifts toward a focus on INclusivity. The words that come up over and over in his writins and reflections are: Friendship, Dialogue, and the Other. The friendship he’s referring to is of the deepest kind, mirroring what Aquinas refers to in describing the relationships in the Trinity, that kind. Dialogue for him is of the kind that grows out of such friendship. There is a dialogue of words, surely, but also, dialogue of service (washing the feet of one another and others), of religious experience (learning Arabic in order to communicate with fellow countrymen and also to be able to read and study the sacred texts of Islam in the original), and the dialogue of life itself, sharing it on all levels. “The Other” means the persons who were the object of his friendship, the partners in his dialogue, “the other.” His understanding of what his life as a Christian was to be about was deep relationships with people, the way of Jesus. How could one know God, he asked, without entering into a life of love and communion with others? an impossibility. And for this belief, he suffered, even unto death, as the political manipulation of Islam ravaged his beloved land. Radical Fundamentalist groups could not understand or accept what he call “the folly” of love and communion with others. They killed him for it.

Pierre Claverie called his life “a ministry of communion.” Reflection on today’s celebration leads us to know that whatever OUR ministries, our ways of washing the feet of “the other,” they are, also, “ministries of Communion.” Not only do they proceed from our Baptismal call (to which we will be re-called on Saturday night), but they are, also, nourished over and over again at this banquet table. Each time we are thus fed and served here, we remember how unconditionally and intimately we are loved. In that Communion we are empowered, as individuals and as a people, to pray this night something like this: “O, Christ, when you ask, ‘Do you realize what I have done for you?’ we answer,’Yes,we do realize what you have done for us. And in communion with you, as you have done for us, we will also do.” Amen

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