Maunday Thursday Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
HOLY WEEK MAUNDAY THURSDAY...

...When I taught in Oxford University, I used repeatedly to ask the Theology Faculty for funds to take students to the Holy Land. Having been there myself, I knew that you could learn things in a few days on site that would take you several weeks in the library and classroom.

My superiors disagreed. There are plenty of books in the library, they said, with maps and pictures and full descriptions. You don’t need to go there yourself.

Only a library-bound academic, of course, could think like that. Most people find that, when they go to the Holy Land, scales fall from their eyes. The sights. The sounds. The smells. The people. The meals.

The meals! Yes, indeed. Sharing a meal is one of the most ordinary and at the same time one of the most profound things we humans ever do. As I write this I am expecting to have lunch by myself, and I feel that as a deprivation, a loss. Meals bind us together. They say something about who we are, and why. Though fewer people in my country now enjoy the traditional family Sunday lunch, those who do are dimly aware that such an event is just as much about ‘family’ and ‘Sunday’ as it is about ‘lunch’. Events, particularly the event of a meal, convey meaning far more powerfully than any words, any books, any theories...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright