“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
“So our Lord Jesus Christ presented us in His passion with all the difficulties and the daily grind of this present age; while in His resurrection He presented us with the eternal and blessed life of the age to come. Let us endure the present, hope for the future. That’s why during these days, we spend the days that signify the difficulties of the present age by grinding our souls, as it were, with fasting and discipline; while during the days to come, after Easter, we signify the days of the age to come. We aren’t yet there; I said “we signify them, “not” we possess them.” Until the passion, you see, penance; after the resurrection, praise.
That, you see, will be our business in that life, in the kingdom of God: to see Him, to love Him, to praise Him. What, after all, are we going to do there? In this age there are works of necessity… What are the works of necessity? Sowing, plowing, planting, sailing, milling, cooking, weaving, and any other similar works of necessity; and those good works of ours are also works of necessity: breaking your bread to the hungry is not a necessity of yours, but it is one of the person you are breaking your bread to. Welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, redeeming the captive, visiting the sick, giving advice to the uncertain, freeing the oppressed, all these belong to almsgiving; they are works of necessity…
Well, in that kingdom there won’t be any works of necessity, because there won’t be any neediness there… Where there is no neediness, there are no works of necessity… What, after all, are you going to do in order to eat, when nobody’s hungry? How are you going to perform those works of mercy? Who can you break bread to, when nobody is in need? What sick people can you visit, where perpetual health is the rule? What dead persons can you bury, where immortality never dies? The works of necessity vanish…”
Augustine of Hippo in Sermon 211A.1-2, “During Lent: A Fragment” in Sermons: The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, translation and notes by Edmund Hill (New City Press: New Rochelle, 1993) 133-134.
Happy Maundy Thursday.
It’s the day we celebrate the new commandment Jesus gave us: to love one another. We get to do it as He did it to us. It takes the form of sacrificial service. This side of glory, we get to love through “works of necessity” to all people, especially the undeserving.
Since the days of the early church, the Lenten practices have aimed to teach us self denial, such as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which were collectively codified as penance. And penance prepares us for life after the resurrection, or a time of praise.
We are in the days of penance, there are needs everywhere so we get to be generous at all times and on all occasions because that is the purpose for which we were saved by grace. To do good works of necessity which He prepared in advance for us to do.