The God of Invitation and Accompaniment at the Holy Thursday Liturgy

I went to Mass again last night.

I wish I’d gone for some noble reason, but truthfully, I only dragged myself into church because I love beautiful music, and the songs of the Holy Thursday liturgy are my favorite in the whole liturgical calendar. That was the carrot that got me there.

I’ve been so terrified of Mass. I hate going to Mass. Going to Mass makes me think of every terrible thing that’s happened to me in the Catholic Church. But somehow, there I was.

We came in late because Adrienne had been delayed at soccer practice. There wasn’t even time to go home and change. I was in my ordinary clothes and she was in her soccer shorts. There was absolutely no room in the pews, and I didn’t want to sit in there anyway, in case I had a panic attack. We stood in the foyer– and even then, we were packed among other latecomers like sardines.

We’d missed the whole Liturgy of the Word.

We got there just before the pastor started washing feet.

Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est. Where charity and love are, God is.

What a beautiful hymn.

Where charity and love are, God is. This is because God is charity and love. What is love? Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.

That is not the god I was raised with. This is not the god of the Charismatic Renewal. The god of the Charismatic Renewal is a vengeful, power-hungry abusive father, the opposite of love. And that is a god I have often seen revered in Catholic circles. The Catholic Church is always committing that idolatry, especially around here. So many of her children have been made human sacrifices to that other god. I have. My friends have.

Yet here I was, one of the Church’s murdered children, singing to the real God at her Liturgy.

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth; pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua.

Heaven and Earth are full of Your glory, if only we didn’t so often look away to serve something other than love.

And then I heard the priest say that line which is a little different than at any other time of the year. On the day before he was to suffer for our salvation and the salvation of all, that is today, he took bread in his holy and venerable hands.

That is tonight.

Tonight, right now, in this moment and no other, Christ who became Man took bread in His human hands and made the bread into something it wasn’t before, so that I could be what I hadn’t been before, because He loves me just as I am now.

There it was again: invitation and accompaniment. Invitation, because an infinite God always calls us to journey closer and closer to Him. Accompaniment, because an infinite God is always here. God is everywhere present and filling all things– not to judge and be disgusted by the flaws in all things, but because He is deeply and passionately in love with all things. Invitation, because we are fininte and He is not, so there is always further to go. Accompaniment, because He in His entirety is already here where we begin.

I was terrified of Holy Communion. I didn’t want to go up and receive. I was running through all the things I’d done in the past few months, trying to find a mortal sin that would damn me if I received the Host. But there was the God of Invitation and Accompaniment, not demanding, not insisting, just inviting, as if to say: “I am here with you now, because I want to be, because I love you. This can be our Communion, here in the back of the church, if you like. But if you are ready to come to my banquet, I invite you. Come forward, whenever you can.” 

So I did.

I came back, nervously chewing, waiting for the panic attack, but it didn’t come.

What came, as I knelt, and as I stood, and as we knelt again for the Pange Lingua, was something else.

It felt like a Word from the Lord.

People in the Charismatic Renewal used to get Words from the Lord all the time: they would blurt out prophesies of persecution and terror that popped into their heads in the middle of Praise and Worship. I never got a Word from the Lord. I didn’t have any spiritual gifts. I couldn’t even babble in tongues.

What happened in the back of the church was probably just my mind laying out for me what I already knew to be true. But if it was a Word from the Lord, I might put it something like this:

I am the God of invitation and accompaniment. I am not the small and petty god of the Charismatic Renewal. I do not know them. They do not speak for me. But I am the God who sometimes communed with you in the Charismatic Renewal, because I am everywhere present and filling all things, because I love you and want to be with you. 

Pange lingua gloriosi
Corporis mysterium,
Sanguinisque pretiosi,
Quem in mundi pretium
Fructus ventris generosi,
Rex effudit gentium.

Nobis datus, nobis natus
Ex intacta Virgine
Et in mundo conversatus,
Sparso verbi semine,
Sui moras incolatus
Miro clausit ordine.

I am not the god of rules and regulations, of judgement and accusation and hell. I am the God of Heaven, and the God of Earth which is where Heaven begins for you.  I am the God Who constantly invites you forward, but I am also right here with you, because I want to be. You don’t have to earn me. You don’t have to do anything. I am already with you. 

In supremae nocte coenae
Recumbens cum fratribus,
Observata lege plene
Cibis in legalibus,
Cibum turbae duodenae
Se dat suis manibus. 

Verbum caro, panem verum
Verbo carnem efficit:
Fitque sanguis Christi merum,
Et si sensus deficit,
Ad firmandum cor sincerum
Sola fides sufficit.

I am not the god of abuse. I am not the god who demands you put up with abuse. I am the God Who, when I saw my children would be abused, came down and insisted on being abused with them. In this way, everyone who does harm will find themselves harming Me, and everyone who is harmed will find their suffering is one with the Life of God. What will happen next has not yet been revealed, but at this moment, when everything is terrible and wrong, God dwells here with the wronged.

Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.

Genitori, Genitoque
Laus et iubilatio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio:
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio.
Amen.

Whatever burdens were put on you did not come from me, but I’ll help you carry them. I am already here, bearing them with you. I am the God of Invitation and Accompaniment, and my name is Emmanuel. Emmanuel means God-With-Us. 

Somewhere in there, I got on the end of the procession and found myself in the Eucharistic chapel.

Adrienne and I only stayed for a minute.

We came out into the cold night, and everything was just the same as before. But for a moment, I’d spoken with Him.

And I was not afraid.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.