Jesus’ Last Hour

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

“My Hour has come,” Jesus said just before the Last Supper. This Hour which He has referred to many times includes the entire Paschal Mystery, beginning with the Last Supper which He longed to celebrate with His disciples loving them to the end, including His Passion and Death on the Cross in which His Body is broken and His Blood poured out, and culminating in His Glorious Resurrection from the dead on Easter. It’s a curious fact that while Jesus’ Hour endured for many hours, it is always called by Him His Hour. More interesting still is that Jesus’ long Hour is completed in its entirety in the one hour of our Sunday Mass!

So Jesus’ Hour is our Holy Mass. We repeat, re-present and memorialize in a unique way the entire Paschal Mystery in every Mass! Just as Jesus “loved those who were His own in the world and loved them to the end,”so too He loves each and every one of us as His own in the world who attend His Hour. Just as He asked his disciples to watch and pray with Him in the garden, so too He asks us in each Mass to watch and pray to console and accompany Him now in a sacramental way in what He went through during His Hour. Just as He blessed and broke the bread and gave it to His disciples saying, “Take and eat. This is My Body, which is broken for you on the cross,” He gives His Body for us again in an unbloody way so we can eat It. Just as He rose from the dead and opened the minds of His disciples to the meaning of the Scriptures that He had to suffer and thus enter into His glory, so too He enlightens our minds in the Mass to hear and understand the mysteries of our faith so that our hearts may burn with zeal for the truth. And Just as He blessed them while ascending into Heaven promising to remain with the disciples always, so too in the Mass He blesses us and is indeed present with us always.

Many bishops have lately restored the obligation of Sunday Mass attendance and exhorted their flocks to return to Mass. Bishop Olmsted in Phoenix has published his third Apostolic Exhortation called Veneremur Cernui (We fall down in worship) concerning the great mystery of the Mass with a call to frequent it even during the week!

Happy Feast of Corpus Christi!