Maundy Thursday

About 3,500 years ago, God’s promises to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob looked like it would be impossible to complete. The small tribes that developed from Jacob’s 12 sons had grown to become very numerous, but they were trapped in a foreign nation: reduced to slavery in Egypt, oppressed under one of the most powerful empires of the Bronze Age. They were weak enough to be easily oppressed and forced into manual labor, although they were also numerous enough that the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried about what might happen if they allied with one of their enemies. So he attempted to eliminate them as a unique people: killing all male children, so that the next generation of women would be forced to marry Egyptians and cease to be distinct. This backfired. The midwives who helped with Israelite births did not cooperate. One Israelite mother, realizing she could no longer hide her infant son, built a small boat for him, and set him out on the river. There, the child was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, and named Moses because she drew him out of the water.

40 years later, this child would grow up, and flee to Midian. There, God appeared to him in a bush that was burning, but not burnt up: a miraculous fire that did not consume. God sent him back to Egypt, and gave him a mission there: he would free the Israelite people from their oppression. Moses returns to Egypt, meets up with his brother Aaron, who would serve as Moses’ spokesman because Moses had a speech impediment, and the two of them go to Pharaoh, and demand that he let Israel go to worship their God. Pharaoh refuses. Moses throws his staff on the ground, and it turns into a serpent: the symbol of the Egyptian goddess who protected Pharaoh. The Egyptian gods would not be able to help Pharaoh in his battle against the one, true God. This pattern repeats nine times. Each time, Pharaoh refuses, and Moses demonstrates the power that the God of Israel holds over the elements of nature worshiped as gods by the Egyptians: starting with the Nile, which he turns to blood, and ending with three days of darkness, showing the God of Israel’s power over Ra, the Egyptian god of the sun. Pharaoh still refused to let Israel go. One Egyptian god remained, one great power that was blocking the freedom of Israel to worship the one, true God. Pharaoh himself. This is where today’s first reading picks up.

God gives an unusual set of instructions. This event is important enough that the entire calendar will be based on it: each year will start in the month that includes a memorial that makes present these events. Each family will take an unblemished, whole lamb, and slaughter it with the whole assembly of Israel in the evening. They will then apply the blood from this lamb to the doorposts and lintel of their houses, and eat it, roasted with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. As they eat, they are to be ready to flee. That night, God’s judgment on Pharaoh, the idol that set himself up as a god, will be executed: God will strike down the firstborn throughout Egypt, except where the doorposts and lintels are marked by the blood of the lamb. After this happens, Pharaoh lets the people go, but their liberation is not yet complete. This story will be concluded Saturday evening, during the Easter Vigil, as we complete the celebration of the Triduum, the most holy three days of the year.

Every year, the Jewish people celebrate this feast, they commemorate the Passover through a memorial of this festal meal that makes the events themselves present. 1990 years ago, in the year 33 AD, about 1500 or so years after Moses, this memorial was celebrated in a special way that would forever change its significance. It is this particular celebration that establishes the Sacred Triduum, this annual memorial that we begin this evening, and will participate in over the next three days.

After supper was ended, Jesus Christ: God made man, the Son of God sent from heaven to free humanity from its slavery to sin and death, takes bread and wine. He offers them, saying “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” Jesus commands that this should be done as a memorial of Him. Through this liturgical celebration, Christ becomes truly present: the bread and wine truly become Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity. This is not all, however. As the celebration of the Passover makes present the events that freed the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, this new Passover, the Eucharist makes present Christ’s sacrificial offering of himself on the Cross, through which our sin is destroyed along with his resurrection in a glorified body, through which death itself is destroyed. In the new Passover, Christ Himself becomes the unblemished sacrifice, and sheds his blood for our salvation; the new Covenant in Christ’s blood makes present the events that free us from slavery to sin and death. This is what we celebrate tonight. We celebrate the institution of the Eucharist, and its establishment for our sake. Unlike the Passover, which is celebrated once a year, we can participate in this memorial by attending Mass almost every day of the year, and are obliged to participate in this memorial at least once every week, on Sunday, the day that commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead, as well as on Holy Days of Obligation.

However, there is more to celebrate tonight. Alongside the institution of the Eucharist, we also commemorate the institution of the Priesthood. Every celebration of the Eucharist requires bread and wine, but also the man who will offer it, the man who acts in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, to offer Christ’s sacrifice. This is where the Gospel comes in: the Mandatum, the great command given by Christ to his apostles, the first Bishops who would eventually ordain Priests to help them in offering this sacrifice. In preparation for the feast that was to come, in preparation for the institution of the Eucharist, his sacrificial offering of himself, and its perpetuation through the ministry of the Priesthood, Jesus washes the feet of his Apostles, mimicking an action done in preparation for the ordination of Priests in the Old Testament. He instructs them to do likewise, to imitate the life of love and service he has modeled for them, the life all Christians are called to, but one that must be most carefully imitated and modeled by those called to offer the sacrifice of Christ that we call the Mass. We will see a liturgical model for this service in a few minutes, as Abbot Michael washes the feet of 12 of us. A few verses later in the Gospel, this call is made even more explicit. Jesus gives the Apostles a New Commandment, one that forms the basis of our Christian life and is echoed throughout tonight’s liturgy. This commandment is expressed most highly in the example of Jesus: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Those are the key themes of tonight’s liturgy: the institution of the Eucharist, the institution of the Priesthood, and the commandment of fraternal love. However, important as they are, these three elements are not complete in themselves. Without the cross, we are not freed from our sins. Without the resurrection, we are not freed from death, and Christ is not with us. Without either the cross or the resurrection, the commandment of fraternal love is impossible, and the Eucharist and Priesthood are empty rituals. Similarly, the cross and resurrection cannot be made present to us without the Eucharist and the Priesthood, and cannot be understood without the New Commandment of fraternal love.

Tonight’s liturgy will end on an inconclusive note, as happened on the night of the original Last Supper. We will process to the Altar of Repose, where the consecrated species that is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, will rest for a few hours this evening. This imitates Christ going to the garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, a significant walk away from where the Last Supper was celebrated, in the heart of the city of Jerusalem. At the Altar of Repose, we wait and pray, as Jesus asked Peter, James and John to remain with Him as He prayed in the garden. There, Jesus asked that the cup be taken from Him, but accepted God’s will, and prepared Himself for the painful events that would follow. Unlike Peter, James and John, we will hopefully not fall asleep as we wait with Christ, and ask him to give us strength to fully participate in His sacrifice tomorrow. After a few moments there, we will each depart silently, without any formal dismissal. It would be a good idea to come back after dinner at the times given for each of your dorms to spend time in prayer with Christ. By the time we return tomorrow afternoon to adore the Cross, Judas, one of the 12 Apostles, and a mob will have entered the garden, arrested Jesus, taken him back to the city for the night, and turned him over to Pontius Pilate for his crucifixion. The stage is set for the climactic point of human history, what we have been preparing for all of Lent. The final culmination of the events prepared by God since Adam and Eve made their fateful decision, and plunged humanity into slavery to sin and death.