We share this inspiring reflection by Michelle Francl-Donnay from the April 2025 issue of Give Us This Day.
Last Supper by Olga Bakhtina. olgabakhtina.com/byzantium. Used with permission.
Fully Immersed
By Michelle Francl-Donnay
After the starkness of Lent, with its stripped altars and veiled statues, it’s always a shock when I walk into the church on Holy Thursday. The altar is draped in crimson satin, the chapel where the Eucharist will repose is overflowing with flowers and candles. Tendrils of incense wind toward the ceiling, a gathering cloud of prayer above the nave. In the sacristy, an empty monstrance glitters alongside stacks of fluffy white towels awaiting the washing of the feet.
In the midst of this staggering visual richness, I sometimes forget there are other senses at play tonight. The soundscape is lavish. The sound of the water as it gurgles into the basins, the sigh as an exhausted woman drops into a chair before the altar, the rough sound of a towel drying her feet. The ting-ting of the chain on the censer as it swings in procession. The choir softly chanting the Pange Lingua as it circles the church, like the stirring of the wind before a storm. Word made flesh indeed.
This liturgy begs us not just to listen, but to hear, not just to stand in witness as a procession passes by, but to bear that Word out the doors of the church—to make it flesh. Look! Here is the eternal Word that stirred the universe into being, the whispered Word that called to Elijah, the redemptive Word that silenced death on the cross, the living Word that sent Mary Magdalene out of the garden to proclaim the Resurrection. Listen! Hear the Word that commands me to wash my neighbors’ feet, that whispers to me, “take up your cross,” that speaks my name and sends me out to make manifest the Good News. Verbum caro, panem verum, Verbo carnem éfficit. Become flesh in me.
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Michelle Francl-Donnay is a wife and mother, a professor of chemistry, and an adjunct scholar at the Vatican Observatory. She is author of Prayer: Biblical Wisdom for Seeking God in the Little Rock Scripture Study Alive in the Word series. Her website is michellefrancldonnay.com.
"Fully Immersed" by Michelle Francl-Donnay from the April 2025 issue of Give Us This Day giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2025). Used with permission.
