Holy Thursday 2024
Fr. Ben Riley
We have arrived. We have journeyed many weeks through the penance and sacrifices of Lent and have now arrived at Holy Week and, more particularly, Holy Thursday, the day we celebrate many mystical events. Today, our Lord instituted the priesthood. He instituted the Mass, and He instituted the Eucharist. He did all of this in an unassuming room on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, a room that is commonly called the Upper Room, a place where many Biblical events took place, including the Last Supper, the washing of the Apostle’s feet, the appearance of Jesus to the apostles after his resurrection, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and the election of the apostle Matthias. This upper room was a significant location for the Apostles; it was a sacred space. As we move through this Holy Week, I would like us all to consider the physical locations of these Biblical events, these sacred spaces, because bringing to mind these physical locations in Scripture helps make the spiritual significance deeper. The use of imagination is an ancient spiritual practice.
So, imagine with me; you and your friends preparing the Passover Feast. The room is bigger than you thought it would be, with pillars holding up the roof. There is plenty of room for the twelve and your teacher. Before the meal begins, he asks you to remove your shoes so he can wash your feet. You feel embarrassed because your feet are covered in dust and sand from the road, but in obedience, you take off your sandals. The meal begins, and your teacher says something strange over the bread and then over the second cup of blessing. Now, it makes sense, all those things he has been saying about his body and his blood the last few weeks: this meal is what he was describing.
As I said, the gift of imagination is powerful, especially during these holy week celebrations. Try to imagine yourself there, in the upper room, two thousand years ago, as Jesus offers the Eucharistic feast for the first time.
It’s a great joy to speak about the Eucharist tonight. To speak about the source and the summit of the Christian life. It is everything. It is the beginning. It is the end: that from which we come, and that to which we return. Christ among us.
And of course, there is the strange and surprising position of the Church across the centuries: that Jesus in the Eucharist is really truly and substantially present. I think the best place to look to see the biblical source of this teaching is the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John. I would encourage everybody, to take out your Bibles when you get home and read the 6th chapter of John. It’s the best description of the Eucharist in the New Testament. Jesus there identifies himself as the living bread come down from heaven, and then he says, “Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man you have no life within you.”
It’s important to see how scandalous this was to the people of Jesus’ time: to speak of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. For Jews in the 1st century to eat an animal’s flesh with the blood still in it, you know, a rarely cooked meat, it was forbidden. It was seen as something offensive to God because the blood was, spiritually speaking, life itself, and life properly belongs to God. How much more scandalous to speak of eating human flesh and drinking human blood?
Many of the Jews, many of Jesus’s followers could not follow this teaching. They left, walked away. And yet, Jesus doesn’t soften his language, rather he intensifies it. He says, “My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Unless you eat and drink the flesh and blood of the Son of Man you have no life within you.” This is the basis of the Church’s teaching up and down the centuries: that Jesus is really, truly, and substantially present in the Eucharist.
How do we make sense of this strange teaching on the day Jesus shows the Apostles what he meant? It all comes down to who Jesus is.
Here’s what I mean. If Jesus were simply one human being among many, if he were simply a great human figure, he could speak symbolically. And indeed, if he was speaking symbolically, he would have had a moral obligation to explain himself, to soften the language, and call back those disciples who walked away.
But that’s not what happened, because Jesus is not simply one figure among many. Rather, He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, and therefore what he says, is. Jesus is not just an ordinary human being.
Look to the book of Genesis. God speaks, “Let there be light”, and there was light. “Let the earth come forth”, and it came forth. The prophet Isaiah says the Word of the Lord goes forth and does not return without accomplishing its purpose. What God says, is. As Jesus speaks to his friend, “Lazarus come forth”, and the dead man came forth. To the little girl who had died, the daughter of Jarius, “Little girl, get up”, and she gets up.
The night before He died, in an upper room during a Passover meal, Jesus speaks over the bread, “This is my body” and over the cup of wine, “This is my blood.” He’s not just an ordinary human being trading in symbolic speech. He is God from God, light from light. Therefore, what he says, is.
What is so important about this reality? The sacrament of the Eucharist literally eternalizes. Let me say that again. The Eucharist literally eternalizes us. As we take into ourselves the body and blood of Jesus, we become conformed to him, we become equipped for eternal life.
Saint Paul says, “Is not the bread that we eat a communion with the Body of Christ, and is the cup that we drink not a communion in the Blood of Christ?” That’s the relationship between us and Jesus. He’s not a distant figure that we fondly remember from the past, just someone we look up to like a great hero. As we consume the Eucharist, we are Christofied, we are united with Him. This is why Pope Saint John Paul II can say, “The Church comes from the Eucharist.” He wrote this in 2003 in his last encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia.
The Church is not like a club. We could form an organization of like-minded people, and that would be fine, but the Church is so much more than that. We are connected to one another through the Eucharist. Saint Paul reminds us that we are all members of the Body of Christ. By becoming members of his body, we are connected to each other by the deepest bonds, which is why we serve one other, because the suffering of any one of us, is the suffering of all of us. In a social club or business organization, you could say, “That’s not my problem, that’s your problem”, but if we are members of the same body, then your suffering is my suffering, and your need is my need.
That’s why it’s so important; what we are about to do in receiving the Eucharist and what I, in imitation of Jesus, am about to do. I’m going to wash the feet of 12 people. The washing of the feet is symbolic of our care for each other.
This is a central idea of Christianity. Christ is among us, really, truly, and substantially present in the Eucharist. We are going to eat his body and drink his blood, becoming conformed to him. And finally, that conformity looks like something. It looks like what I am about to do.