Stay with Me

A Homily for Holy Thursday 2026

There’s a voice rising. Can you discern its source? A voice making a simple, insistent plea: Stay with me. Remain here with me.

Stay with me, and perhaps we’ll wash each other’s feet. Remain with me, and we’ll tell each other our stories. Stay with me, and we’ll gather at table to feed and be fed. Remain with me, and we’ll stand in each other’s pain and neither of us will look away. Stay with me, and maybe I’ll weep and maybe you’ll weep, but then we’ll both laugh longer and harder together. Remain with me, and we’ll heal together.

There’s a voice rising. Can you discern its source? A voice making a simple, insistent plea: Stay with me. Remain here with me.

Jesus made one simple request of his disciples: Stay with me. But when the pain began to overwhelm, when the threat became promise, when uncertainty became the only certainty and death was imminent, they fled.

Where, perhaps, is Jesus’ insistent plea rising up in your own life right now? Can you discern the source? Is it the plea, the cry, of your own heart? The plea of a friend? The plea of a family member, a community member? The plea of a neighbor or maybe even a stranger? Jesus makes one simple request of us: Stay with me in them and let me stay with you through them.

In the work of trauma care they speak of the utterly invaluable role of the Empathetic Witness. When someone suffers trauma, when something happens that overwhelms: sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, bullying, betrayal, rejection, exclusion… the person traumatized is too often left alone in the aftermath. And alone they have to fight to find a way to survive. And the survival is wise, but the cost of survival is steep: you learn to speak with a broken voice, to move about in a borrowed body, and to occupy the shadows of life with a belittled spirit.

In being left alone the effects of trauma are amplified, the effects of shame toxified, as the tentacles of evil wraps itself around that one deserted heart.

So, what heals? It’s the soft, steady, firm, gently-tenacious voice of another. What heals? It’s the fully and warmly embodied presence of another who says, “I see you and I will not turn away.” What heals? It’s the generous heart and spirit of those deeply devoted to their own healing and that of others. An expansive spirit who knows none of us are hurt alone so none of us can heal alone.

In the midst of conflict with the religious leaders of his day, leaders speaking with brittle, shrill voices that betray their fear; leaders bullying the bodies of others by their disembodied delusion; leaders inflicting pain via a self-centered, narcissistic blindness, Jesus says: “He has never left me alone.” Jesus knew thee Empathetic Witness. God is known by his “Withness,” not as act but as mode of being. God is known by “Withness” and we make God know when we risk being with each other. When we stand as Empathetic Witness to the pain of others. Empathetic Witness is a name for God. We know God by his “Withness.” We witness to God by the quality of our “Withness” to each other. And that “Withness” cannot be reduced to physical proximity alone. There are ways to be with across the miles because it’s God who makes all “Withness” possible!

St. Augustine writes: “When we come to this table and receive the body and blood of the one who laid down his life for us then we too must provide the same kind of meal for each other.” In the Eucharist, Christ is intimately with us therefore we must risk being intimately with each other, especially in each other’s isolation and pain.

I would encourage all of us to find ways to stand positively with those being left alone in a world seeking to reframe “empathy” as weakness and failure. Perhaps those who do so do not know that they are taking the name of God in vain. Empathetic Witness changes lives, perhaps even saves lives as it is the very name of God.

Jesus made one simple plea to his disciples: Stay with me. Remain here with me. This Holy Thursday night, he isn’t calling us back to a Gethsemane lost in the haze of history. But he is inviting us to speak form the Gethsemane of our own hearts and to be attentive to the voices speaking out of the Gethsemane they occupy, with broken voices, borrowed bodies, and belittled spirits. And then, recommit ourselves to our own Witness of Withness. In response to Christ’s plea the disciples fled. What will we do? What will it take for us to:

Stay, Remain. Watch and Pray!