MAUNDY THURSDAY

April 14, 2022

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

 

 

The Liturgy of Maundy Thursday commemorates our Lord’s Last Supper with his disciples on the eve of his death: the occasion when he washes his disciples’ feet, institutes the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, and ordains the twelve apostles to the priesthood of the new Covenant. 

 

A key point is that these events are not merely a prelude to Good Friday, a few last-minute items to be checked off and gotten out of the way before he can get down to the real business that will take place on the next day. Instead, they’re integral and interrelated parts of a greater whole: the mystery of our redemption.

 

At supper, he bids his disciples continue gathering to share ritual meals, just as they’ve been doing regularly for as long as they’ve been together. But to the usual Jewish blessings said at the breaking of the bread before the meal, and the sharing of the cup after it, Jesus now adds new, unprecedented, and indeed shocking words: “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me … This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

 

Known as the Words of Institution, these words demonstrate that the Last Supper and the Crucifixion mutually interpret and illuminate one another. At the time, the disciples likely have no idea of what Jesus means by these words. What he says over the bread and wine will make sense only in retrospect, once his body is lifted high on the cross, and his blood spilt for the life of the world. And thereafter his words will carry that same meaning whenever Christians gather with the priestly successors of those same apostles to break the bread and share the cup in his Name. His Crucifixion thus fulfills and interprets the words he speaks over the bread and the wine.

 

Conversely, those same words interpret and explain the meaning of the Crucifixion itself. We’re able to understand the full significance of Christ’s death on the cross only in light of his words at the Last Supper: “This is my body, which is given for you …” “This is my blood … poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” So, we can’t fully understand the Last Supper except by looking ahead to the Crucifixion; and we can’t fully understand the Crucifixion except by looking back at the Last Supper. Neither event is fully intelligible on its own. Saint Paul sums up this dynamic of mutual interpretation neatly in this evening’s reading from his First Epistle to the Corinthians when he writes: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

 

But there’s more. When he says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” the Greek word translated as remembrance, anamnesis, means something more than mere recollection in a subjective psychological sense. It signifies instead the transformation of time itself, a making present of past events. So, his words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” really mean something like, “Do this to call me into your midst again so that I will be present among you as I am now.”

 

This “making present” refers first to the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in which from the beginning the Church has discerned the real presence of Our Lord’s Body and Blood. It refers secondly to the Church itself, the Body of Christ, which continues Our Lord’s life and work on earth until he returns to judge the living and the dead at the end of time. 

 

So, Jesus gives us another sign to show us what his becoming present in his Church looks like when it happens. He girds on a towel and washes his disciples’ feet. On Maundy Thursday we repeat this ritual foot-washing as the symbol of our obedience to his commandment to love one another as he has loved us. (The word “Maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum, or commandment.)

 

But it would be a grave mistake, reflecting a fatal flaw in our understanding of the Rites of Maundy Thursday, to take the foot-washing merely as a bit of exemplary moral advice given as a parting shot to his disciples—along the lines of “here’s how I want you to carry on with me”—which I fear is what we’re so often tempted to make of it. For again, like his words over the bread and the cup, the foot-washing derives its full meaning from the Lord’s death on the cross the next day. 

 

A key text for interpreting Our Lord’s washing his disciples’ feet is the famous passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” 

 

This passage makes explicit the connection between Christ’s taking the form of a servant and his becoming obedient to even death on a cross. By taking the role of a domestic servant and washing his disciples’ feet, much to their horror and dismay, Jesus points to his ultimate act of servanthood the next day when he dies on the cross for the sins of the whole world. 

 

So, the foot-washing and the crucifixion are also mutually interpretive: the foot-washing symbolizes death to self in the service of others; and death to self in service to others receives its ultimate expression in the spilled blood that washes us clean from our sins. Understood this way, the foot-washing exemplifies the Christian life’s cruciform pattern of self-sacrificial service to others: loving one another as Christ has loved us, always mindful that the cross is the place where his love for us reaches its perfect fulfillment.

 

In short, the events we commemorate and re-enact on Maundy Thursday—washing feet, breaking the bread, and sharing the cup—are not so much discrete moments following one upon another as they’re interrelated aspects of the single mystery of redemption, culminating in the Lord’s complete self-offering in love for those he came to save. We fully understand and appreciate each of these elements only in light of all the others. 

 

This evening’s liturgy invites us, then, to answer Our Lord’s call to take up our cross and follow him—precisely by meeting together regularly to break the bread and share the cup, and then by going out into the world to serve others in his Name.