HOLY THURSDAY: THE LORD’S SUPPER (Ex 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Cor 11:23-26; Jn 13:1-15) 

 

With this celebration, the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we inaugurate the Sacred Paschal Triduum. We inaugurate three days of Lord’s life: suffering, passion, death, and Resurrection.

In today’s First Reading Moses describes to the Israelites, still enslaved in Egypt, of the importance of the Passover not only for that night, but for all nights to come.

In the Passover the Paschal lamb was sacrificed and its blood spread over the doorpost and lintels to keep them from death. In the Last Supper the Lord states his intent to become the true Paschal lamb. He will be sacrificed on Good Friday and through his blood we will be saved from the spiritual death that sin inflicts.[The Israelites were forbidden to eat or drink anything with blood, because life of anything was in its blood. However, Jesus told them, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you:  because, his blood was divine blood that needs to run in every soul to remove sin, sickness and death].

In instituting the Eucharist Jesus asks us to perpetually commemorate his sacrifice: “do this in memory of me.” He was not asking them to remember the Passover feast, which all the Jews did every year. He was asking them to remember and do his last supper which embodied his giving of himself on the cross and his rising on the third day. Those three days of his life form one single unit as his/our Passover from the slavery of sin and death.

In every celebration of the Eucharist we re-offer in an unbloody manner what he once offered on the Cross: himself. But that sacrifice that we offer is not different from the original Sacrifice of Jesus, but the same one. There is only one Sacrifice of Christ. We are not doing a different one at each Mass. To stress the concept of the unity of the celebration in the early church when the Popes said Mass in Rome, the neighboring parishes received a consecrated piece of host from the celebration of the Pope which they used in the parishes around Rome. That unity of each Mass with other Masses is still preserved when we use the consecrated body from the previous celebration preserved in the tabernacle. And the unity with the following day’s mass is also maintained when we preserve the remaining hosts for the next day’s Mass.

In today’s Second Reading Paul recalls Christ’s words to celebrate the Eucharist in “remembrance” of him. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.1 Cor 11:26.

This sacrifice is made sacramentally present at every Mass—not for the sake of God, who has no need of it, but for our sake. 

Why do we repeatedly celebrate it? By the repeated celebration it should go deeper and deeper into us and become part of our life and remember it every day that my eternal life gets its effect from this one celebration.

By the washing of the feet of his disciples before a Passover meal Our Lord is teaching a lesson he expects his disciples to imitate, which is why he is so hard on Peter when he balks at having his feet washed by Our Lord. Our Lord’s response is interesting: “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” Our Lord is teaching them to serve one another by this command.

If Peter had refused, would he ever have done it either? Perhaps an inheritance would have been lost, the inheritance of loving one another, in this case, through service, just as Our Lord did. In John’s account of the Last Supper this is just the first gesture showing the importance in Jesus’ mind of his commandment to love.

The washing of his disciples' feet was a perfect image of what this Christ-like love is all about. So, when we refuse to wash the feet of others or like Peter refuse to be washed, mean we do not like to serve others, and love others as Christ did.

For Christ, love is not feelings; it is active and costly, paid by life. That's what the washing of the feet teaches us.

And because he knows we're slow learners, he is going to repeat the lesson even more graphically by the suffering and death of his passion, which he says to do in his remembrance.

Every Mass is the celebration of the passion and death of Jesus. It is not enough to attend just once to dive deep into that mystery. Because our capacity is limited to draw enough grace for our lives from just one celebration. That is why the Church tells us to attend Mass at least on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligations in keeping with Jesus’ command: do this in memory of me.

The Mass is the prayer of the Church par excellence: meaning, there is no greater prayer other than the holy sacrifice of the Mass. From the opening prayer to the closing prayer, the Mass is one continual offering to God the Father by making present the passion of his Son. Almost all of the prayers are addressed exclusively to the Father. [the prayer before the exchange of peace: Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles….  is addressed to Jesus] We, as a community of believers, participate in this awesome drama that is relived every time the Mass is offered. We are not merely spectators but active participants in the Lord’s passion.

 

The Mass is not for our entertainment. Considering that we are reliving the Lord’s passion, we are participating in the sacrificial offering of Jesus on the cross, which is most reflected in the Eucharist. The music should accompany our prayer of thanksgiving for what we have received and should enhance our communal participation. It wouldn’t be appropriate to play rock music during someone’s funeral. Neither would it be appropriate to play music that draws attention to the congregation rather than on the sacrifice unfolding before our eyes. The focus is not community, it is God who loved us in Christ. We are not coming here to get something, but primarily give something, give honor and glory to God for his great gift of salvation.

Therefore, the Mass is not meant to be entertaining.  Liturgy without the cross can be made entertaining, but one involving cross and death cannot be entertaining. A clean, comfortable, inoffensive, tell-me-what-I-want-to-hear celebration, is not what is to be expected at Mass. You can probably get that in non-denominational celebrations, because they are not Holy Masses. They call them, the Lord’s table, meaning just the last supper. We are not celebrating just the last Supper here. It is only one of the three things we do here.

We were not made to be comfortable. Giving one hour a week to attend Mass, fasting an hour before communion, going to church during vacations, putting up with boring homilies– all these are nothing compared to what our Savior endured for us. We have inadvertently trained ourselves to see these small sacrifices as burdens rather than seeing them as paths to sanctification. Sometimes it may go longer than usual.  If someone in your family is dying, would you look the watch and say he/she is taking time to die? If we really know what is going on in the Mass, we can never say that.

Jesus has so much that he wants to say to us, so much that he wants to do for us and through us.  That is why he decided to stay with us and give himself to us directly, entirely, in the Eucharist.

"I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do."

Today, when we receive Holy Communion, let's ask Jesus for the strength we need to wash our neighbors' feet, to be his true disciples, to love at least a little bit more like him - and let's promise that between now and Easter Sunday, we will make an effort to do for someone else what he has done for us.