"Our Blessing-Cup is a Communion with the Blood of Christ"
Today's Mass Readings
On Holy Thursday we recall the last supper that Jesus celebrated the Passover with his apostles. This is day that Jesus instituted the Eucharist. The context is something familiar to the men gathered around him: a Passover seder, which they would have been celebrating all their lives. The first reading from Exodus describes how such a seder meal should happen. With Jesus at the Last Supper, this Passover meal takes on a new meaning. Jesus is the bread, Jesus is the wine, Jesus is the sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The second reading, from 1 Corinthians, shows how Paul and the early Church understood the Eucharist. Unlike the Passover of the Old Testament, the new Passover is celebrated not once a year, but every day, all over the world. As St. Paul would tell the Corinthians: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” So the first and second readings, along with the psalm, focus on the Eucharist, on Christ being offered in the bread and wine as our continual sacrifice.
It is in the context of the last supper, the gospel reading highlights another significance of this meal. Jesus acts as the servant, washing his apostles’ feet. When we partake of the Eucharist, we must act as Jesus does, allowing his presence in the Eucharist to transform our very lives into lives of service for those around us. Jesus is moved by love, as the opening lines of the Gospel passage tells us. We, too, must be moved by love for God, for others and for ourselves. Jesus gifts himself to us in the Eucharist and provides a model for how we can do something similar. During the Triduum, (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday) let us reflect on the tremendous gift of the Eucharist to us, thinking of how this gift can transform us so that we are gifts to those around us.
Let us end our reflection with the words of Psalm 116:
How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people.