Catholics commemorate the complex and profound events of the evening of the Last Supper on the Thursday before Easter, which is known as Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday.
Jesus was celebrating the Jewish Passover with his Apostles at what would be his final meal when He instituted the Sacrament of Eucharist by changing the bread and wine into his Body and Blood.
Maundy is derived from the Latin word for “command”, referring to the new Commandment that Jesus gave his disciples to love one another as He loved them when He established the priesthood and washed the feet of his closest followers.
There is no formal end to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper as the faithful have an opportunity to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament into the evening, recalling how Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane where he would be arrested.
Traditionally, on the morning of Holy Thursday the bishop of each diocese celebrates a Chrism Mass where the holy oils that will be used during the year are blessed and priests of the diocese renew their vows.
Holy Thursday is the first of three sacred days that make up the sacred Paschal Triduum. Along with Good Friday and Holy Saturday, it brings Lent to a close.
Holy Thursday is the first day of the Easter Triduum:
God shows that He wants to be close to us:
When the time comes for the Eucharistic Banquet, Christ again stresses the need to serve. “For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. We are called together, then, to express anew the living memorial of the greatest commandment, the commandment of love: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”. Christ’s gesture is a living presentation of this to the Apostles: “His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father”; the hour of greatest love: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end”. All this reaches its culmination at the Last Supper, in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. We have been called together to re-live this event, the institution of the marvellous Sacrament from which the Church never ceases to draw life, the Sacrament which, at the level of the most authentic and profound reality, constitutes the Church. There is no Eucharist without the Church, but, even before that, there is no Church without the Eucharist.
Pope John Paul II, Homily, 27 March 1997
Signifying the unity in the Church and the power of Jesus:
A Mass celebrated only one time each year in each diocese:
Praying with Jesus at night:
Jesus gave the supreme expression of his free offering of Himself at the meal shared with the twelve Apostles “on the night He was betrayed”. On the eve of his Passion, while still free, Jesus transformed this Last Supper with the Apostles into the memorial of his voluntary offering to the Father for the salvation of men: “This is my body which is given for you.” “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 610
Remember Jesus:
Jesus is the Lamb of God:
So when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
John 13: 12-15
A symbolic action and an absurd gesture:
Following Jesus and seeing Him in one another:
Holy Thursday at the place of Jesus’ agony:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Identifying the Catholic Church as the Church:
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