Holy Thursday 2021
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1Cor 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-15
You may remember that around thirty to forty years ago, the custom grew in many parishes and other settings of celebrating something resembling a Passover meal, on or around Holy Thursday.
There would be a seder dish, with the symbolic foods used at Passover, and an explanation would be provided of each of them. There was the question and answer which takes place between father and eldest son in a Jewish household, beginning “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The prayers of Passover would be offered, and it would be pointed out at what point in the meal Jesus would have blessed the bread which became His Body, and which of the ritual cups would have been transformed into His Blood.
As a teaching aid, it was extremely valuable, setting the Last Supper, and hence the Mass, in its original context, taking us back to the roots of our celebration, guarding against the opposite dangers of over-simplification—the idea that Jesus and His disciples “simply had a meal”, which ignores the highly ritualised nature of this particular meal—and over-elaboration, turning the Eucharist into a performance.
Eventually, however, it was banned by the hierarchy on the perfectly reasonable grounds that it could offend the Jewish people, and could be interpreted by them as a form of mimickry, though I could mention that one such celebration which I attended was presided over by a Rabbi.
Yet whilst we are no longer permitted to demonstrate in this way the link between the Passover and the Eucharist, it is important that we should be conscious of that link. Hence, we always have as our First Reading on this night the account of the original Passover, followed immediately by St. Paul’s account of the institution of the Eucharist, which was put into writing before any of the Gospels were written down.
Thus we hear of the Paschal Lamb which was slain, its blood smeared on the doorposts to save the people of Israel from slavery, and can make the connection with Jesus, the true Paschal Lamb, whose blood was shed on the Cross to redeem the world from sin, and is now smeared on the lips of the faithful (as one of the early Church Fathers expresses it) as we share in the Passover from death into life.
We are also introduced to the concept of “memorial”, handed down to us by the Jewish people. When the Jews celebrate Passover, they are not merely remembering a past event, they are making the past present: they are with their ancestors escaping from slavery.
Similarly, when we celebrate Mass, we are not remembering something which happened two thousand years ago; we are participating in those events, made present for us now. This is the meaning of “memorial”. The transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Lord, and the offering of that Body and Blood in sacrifice to the Father in the crucifixion and resurrection, are a present reality. Hence the widespread annoyance that the most recent changes in the translation of the Mass left untouched the unfortunate expression “in memory of me”, when “as a memorial of me” would have been more appropriate, as conveying more accurately that sense of the past made present.
In using St. John’s account of the Last Supper on this night, the Church is reminding us of another important truth. John doesn’t describe the institution of the Eucharist: he has already given us his Eucharistic discourse in chapter six. Instead, he recounts Jesus’ action in washing His disciples’ feet, a reminder that Eucharist and service are inseparable. If our Eucharistic celebration, our Mass, is to be complete, we must be people of loving service, people who literally or metaphorically wash the feet of others. From the Mass, we must go out to love and serve, for if we fail to do that, our making present of the Lord’s sacrifice, and our receiving of His Body and Blood, will be a contradiction. The love of God, shown to us and celebrated by us in the Mass, must be a reality in our daily lives.
