Holy Thursday 2024
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 115 (116); 1Cor 11:23-26; John 13:1-15
We have begun. We have set sail. We have launched into the Sacred Triduum, the most important three days of the year, when we follow closely in the footsteps of the Lord: entering the supper room; emerging into the bleakness of Gethsemane; watching in the High Priest’s palace and the Governor’s headquarters; carrying the Cross; standing at its foot; keeping vigil as we trace the history of salvation—OUR salvation through water and the Holy Spirit; and finally erupting in joy as we proclaim the triumph which gives meaning to existence: Christos aneste CHRIST IS RISEN.
For now, that triumph lies a long way in the future, for we are at the beginning. Where do we begin? We begin in Egypt, among the enslaved Israelites, as they prepare to sacrifice the lambs of Passover, and to eat, for the first time, the Paschal meal. The Israelites are to be saved by blood, the blood of the innocent lamb to be smeared on the doorposts, as a sign to the Lord to pass over their houses, liberating His people from slavery and from death.
Why does that matter to us? It matters because we are the new people of God, inheriting the same promises which He made to Israel, recalling that He sent His only Son to become an Israelite, a Jew, who performed the same rituals as His ancestors, who ate the same Passover meal with it bread, its roasted lamb, its bitter herbs, its series of wine cups.
All that the Jewish people had done throughout their history, and which they continue to do today, Jesus did. It is in the context of that meal that we begin our Triduum, our three days’ journey, seeing in it the roots of our own faith and of our own redemption.
It is St. Paul who, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us the earliest written account of the Passover meal which Jesus celebrated with His disciples on the eve of His death, as He prepared to become the true Paschal Lamb who would redeem, not merely a single nation from slavery, but the whole world from unending death. As if that were not enough, Paul informs us that the Lord Jesus gave thanks—literally “made Eucharist”—over the bread and wine, transforming them into His Body and Blood, instructing us to make present that one sacrifice of His Death and Resurrection throughout the ages by “making Eucharist” in our turn. Thus in every celebration of Mass, Jesus gives Himself to us in the Body and Blood offered to the Father, and draws us into that same self-offering.
All of this is proclaimed to us in our Readings tonight, but there is more. The Gospel passage which we read on this night is always from St. John, who has set out his explanation of the Eucharist in chapter six of his Gospel, and who leaves to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as Paul, the task of recounting how the Eucharist came about.
What John does is to link inextricably with the Eucharist the duty of serving with love. It was the responsibility of the slave to wash the travel-stained feet of guests, yet it is Jesus, the Lord and Saviour, who assumes this task at the Last Supper. Thus, the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacrifice of loving service cannot be broken apart. If we take part in the one, we must undertake the other, or our Eucharistic celebration will be falsified. Sacrifice, salvation, service all form part of our Eucharist, our Mass: over the next three days, we shall be drawn more deeply into all of them.
