Cardinal Pizzaballa's Holy Thursday homily today:

We are in the place where a stone once sealed death. And yet today we are here to celebrate life. There is a tension we cannot ignore: outside, the doors of the Holy Sepulchre are closed.

War has turned this place into a refuge, an “inside” cut off from an “outside” weighed down by fear and strain. We are here as within a womb of peace, while the world around us is being torn apart, and we wish we could change all of this.

And yet, here and now, the Word of God places before us a gesture that overturns all our human ways of thinking.

In the Gospel according to John, we read: “He rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and taking a towel, girded himself” (Jn 13:4). That verb – “to gird oneself” – echoes throughout Scripture. It is the same verb found in the Book of Exodus, when the Lord gives instructions for the Passover: “This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girded, sandals on your feet, and your staff in hand; you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover” (Ex 12:11).

To gird one’s loins, in the Bible, is the gesture of one who is preparing to set out. It is the gesture of one about to make an exodus, to leave the land of slavery and enter into freedom. That night, the people of Israel ate the lamb with their loins girded because they were about to go out. The belt was the sign of a passage at hand.