Maundy Thursday

It may seem strange that we began tonight with an introit antiphon which did not mention the Last Supper, nor the Blessed Sacrament, nor the inauguration of the priesthood, nor the new commandment to love one another. The introit of Maundy Thursday is in many ways the introduction to the whole Triduum, the most sacred three days of the entire year. It is like the overture which leads us into the great mystery of these events which we are now reliving in the heart of Christ’s Body, the Church.

Here are the words we sang: ‘We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.’ This is an introduction to all of the Passion, death and Resurrection of our Lord. Yet it is also an introduction to what in detail we celebrate this night. For in a short while we shall repeat that account of the events of the Last Supper which we do at every Mass, beginning: ‘On the day before He was to suffer...’ and so the events of this evening are told every day, and we have heard from St Paul’s account to the Corinthians. To make the point even clearer, that this is indeed the anniversary of that very day, the day before He suffered, the priest changes the words of the consecration, for the only time in the whole year, adding these: ‘on the day before He was to suffer, for our salvation and the salvation of all, THAT IS, TODAY.’ Of course, we do not mean that this is necessarily the anniversary in the sense that, for instance, September 8th is precisely the anniversary day of the accession of King Charles. After all, the priest says the same words every year on Maundy Thursday night, regardless of what date it falls. It is a liturgical anniversary, it is the day before we commemorate the Lord’s passion and death, and leading up to the Sunday of His resurrection, the greatest day of the year, every year.

Today is that day, whereon He showed us the fullness of the love that would take Him to the Cross and beyond – to the dawn of eternal life. As the Gospel we have just heard makes clear, Maundy Thursday has many aspects. The very name by which we in England know it, Maundy, comes from a form of the word ‘Mandatum’, that is, the ‘commandment’ which Our Lord not merely gives to His Apostles, but which He demonstrates in various ways. Note, first of all, that John introduces the Last Supper, an event which will take up fully five chapters of the entire book, with these words which give the key to understanding all that follows, and not only in the chapters dedicated to the Last Supper and our Lord’s teaching there, but to all that follows on Good Friday, and which we shall hear in John’s Passion tomorrow afternoon.

Note the first thing John says is that this was before the Passover, not the Passover itself. I will say more about that tomorrow. But also note what John says next, that Jesus knew that at last this was the hour, when He should pass, or cross, from this world to the Father. He had spoken many times of this ‘hour’, right from Cana when He said to His Mother, ‘my hour has not yet come’, to the event we heard on the Sunday before last, when His soul was troubled, and He even sought to pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour.’ Yet He knows that it is for this very hour that He has come into the world in the first place. This ‘hour’ is His Passover, and it comprises not just the Supper, but all that the Supper represents and all that it leads towards over the next twenty four hours.

I next want to bring to your attention a very important detail which is not clear in the translation of this passage from St John’s Gospel we have heard. St John summarises the entire Gospel so far in one small but highly significant phrase, saying, ‘He had always loved those who were His in the world’; that is the meaning of all He has done, all His signs of love and mercy have been proofs of His love, and now that the hour of His passing from this world has come, before He goes to the Father there is something He must do to bring everything He has ever done and said to a focus, and to make it the beginning of a new way of life for His Apostles, just as His own life on earth comes to an end. So, as our translation put it, ‘now He showed how perfect His love was.’ This sums up well the meaning of the Greek phrase, but it doesn’t help us to see an important key to understanding what happens on the morrow on the cross. For the exact words John actually uses here are that ‘He now showed them that He loved them to the end.’ I want to remind you of those words tomorrow afternoon, because they are a vital indication of how close this night’s events are to those of tomorrow afternoon – the Last Supper and the Crucifixion are totally united in this perfection of love, in this loving ‘to the end’ of our Lord for all His followers and for all mankind.

From this moment, all that our Lord did at the Last Supper can make sense to us in a new way. It is not only the institution of the Blessed Sacrament in memorial of Him, it is also the sign that this night will give us the means to make this continue to be a living presence in our lives; this night will provide both the key to the meaning of the Cross, and the means of its continued presence and power in the lives of everyone who will every live in union with Christ thereafter, including us here and now.

To turn briefly to St Paul’s familiar words in the 2nd reading, ‘on the night he was betrayed, [Jesus] took bread, and thanked God (i.e. the Eucharist), and broke it, (symbolising His approaching death), and gave it to His disciples saying, “This is my Body which is for you”.’ Likewise He took the chalice saying, “This chalice is the new covenant in my Blood.” This must have been difficult for the Apostles to understand. What was He saying about His Body and Blood, and about the Covenant between God and His chosen people? St Paul concludes this passage with an explanation: ‘every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you are proclaiming His death.’ The gift of Holy Communion, of the Lord’s Body and Blood, which is for us, given under those forms He took into His holy and venerable hands on this night, are the living continuation of His sacrifice which He would achieve once and for all, that is, bring to perfection or fulfilment, on the following day. Without the crucifixion, there would be no Holy Communion, no Holy Mass.

But, finally for now, we cannot forget the Maundy, i.e. the Commandment, which gives today its name in our tradition: ‘Maundy’ or ‘Commandment Thursday’. In fact, our Lord gives the Apostles not one commandment, but two: first He says, ‘love one another as I have loved you’, showing the Twelve what He means by washing their feet in true humility, and then He commands them to ‘do this in memory of me,’ not as a mere commemoration, like a re-enactment of an historical event. The Mass is not a historical reconstruction of the Last Supper, nor is it meant to be. Many of the details of how we fulfil the Command to ‘do this’ are not mere copies of what He did that night. It is the fulfilment, in one and the same celebration, both of the events of the Last Supper and of the Sacrifice of the Cross, by means of all of which our Lord returned to His Father, and gave Himself to us, that we do whenever we do ‘this’ in memory of Him.

This is why on this night, Mass does not actually come to an end in the usual way with a blessing and dismissal. Instead we will joyfully and reverently accompany our Lord’s precious Body to the Altar of Repose where we are invited to keep watch with Him in silence for one hour if possible; otherwise for a little while before going home, and then we will reassemble tomorrow afternoon for the completion of what we begin tonight, namely, the Liturgy of the Passion and Cross. And as tonight’s liturgy has no ending, but in effect continues in silence through the night, so tomorrow’s liturgy has no normal beginning, for we will begin that in total silence. And from that opening silence we will go on to witness the completion, the fulfilment, the perfection of the love He has shown us in tonight’s sacred supper. For tonight and tomorrow are one.