Three apples.

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2025 at the Last Supper

1 Corinthians 11:23–29

“They beheld God, and ate and drank” (Exodus 24:3–11). In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.

A woman named Irene was once abbess of a women’s monastery in Constantinople. One day at Matins a sailor showed up in her monastery church, and approaching her after the service her told her this story: “As my crew was setting sail from Patmos,” he said, “we saw an old man with a long white beard standing on the shore and shouting at us to bring him with us. We couldn’t turn the ship around, but we stopped it so that we could talk with him. But as soon as we stopped it, the man stepped out onto the water and came to us. He presented me with two packages, telling me to bring one to the Archbishop and one to you. Each package has three apples, and he says that they are from the garden of Christ himself in paradise. He told us that he was John the Apostle, and then he disappeared. I don’t know what to make of it, but here’s your package.”

Irene believed the sailor, and took the three apples with gratitude. She ate the first apple while fasting from all other food, a small slice each day for forty days. When Maundy Thursday came, she brought the second apple to the liturgy, and shared it with the other nuns. They found it remarkably sweet, and felt refreshed and satisfied. Irene saved the final apple for her last days on earth. When she ate the apple on her deathbed, the whole monastery was filled with a sweet and peace-giving odour like nothing on earth.

When Katy and I first read that story, we asked ourselves why Irene ate the apples the way she did. Why the first one while fasting? Why the second on Maundy Thursday—which is, of course, today—and why shared? And why the third only on her deathbed?

Irene eats the first apple while fasting for forty days, because the first sweetness of the kingdom which a person tastes is the sweetness of repentance. Turning away from sins and unhelpful attachments to things of the world, we learn the joy of living only for fellowship with our heavenly Father.

Irene eats the third apple on her deathbed because a holy death is the culminating occasion on which a person tastes the sweetness of the kingdom in this world. As we let go of the body and prepare the soul for its upward flight, the holy presence of God makes the sickbeds of his holy people into beds of hope, and sources of peace to their family and friends.

But today we eat the second apple, the apple for Holy Thursday. It is the apple which is eaten neither first nor last, but in the middle of life; it is eaten after the sweetness of God has already been tasted, but is is also not the last time it will be tasted. It satisfies hunger and, of the three apples, it is especially sweet. It brings a joy unalloyed by the sorrow of first repentance or the sorrow of final parting. It alone is received by the whole community together.

The apple is eaten on Holy Thursday because it is the apple of the Holy Eucharist. Today is the day when Christ gives us a gift on earth which comes from his own household on high. He gives us a loaf of bread and a sip of wine—things no less common common than an apple—and promises us that we will taste the sweetness of his presence, always given to and for us, refreshing us, satisfying our hunger. He tells us to “do this,” now, in the middle of life, and neither for the first nor the final time, but repeatedly. “Whenever we eat it,” we do so as a sweet memorial of the gift of life.

The eucharistic apple can only be eaten by the whole church together. There is a sweetness in the act of kneeling next to your friends, but the reason is deeper than any ceremony. As Saint Paul says, “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). Sharing one spiritual food, we become one in spirit with one another and the Lord. We share a common joy because we are one body, the body of Christ. The miracle of Jesus’ sacramental presence is that the bread becomes his body, and then we become that body by consuming it. As ever, we are what we eat.

So when Jesus says that “this is my body which is given for you”—or, as Saint Paul recounts it, just “this is my body which is for you”—there is a double-meaning at play. Jesus gives bread, names it as his body, and then gives it “for us,” for our benefit. But he also breaks bread, names it as his body, and tells us that he gives it to “stand for” us. It is given “for us,” as a representation of our life as a single blessèd loaf. We are the bread; we are the body. We eat the bread because we are what it is and it is what we are: we a single body blessed by God with the angel of his presence.

We become a body in the truest sense: not a “body” which is just a bag of flesh and bones, but a fellowship of head and members, animated by one Mind and one Spirit and coming from the heart of one Father. And as a body we have a single purpose: we are given for the life of the world.

I invite you to taste the sweetness of an apple from paradise.