Holy Thursday 2025
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1Cor 11:23-26; John 13:1-15
What should we focus on tonight? Should it be the Passover, and the meal with which, every year, the Jewish people celebrate their escape from slavery in Egypt, when the paschal lamb was sacrificed and the blood smeared on the doorposts, in order that the avenging angel might pass over them?
That certainly deserves our attention, since we believe that Jesus Christ is the true paschal lamb, who was sacrificed for us, saving us by His blood. Hence we have our own version of the Passover meal: the Mass, the Eucharist, which incorporates many features of the Jewish Passover, in which Jesus shared, and in which He transformed the unleavened bread, and one of the ritual cups of wine, into His own Body and Blood.
Perhaps too our minds are drawn to the Passover in these days when we see the Holy Land again in turmoil. We appear to witness a situation every bit as intractable as the Jewish slavery in Egypt. We see a Jewish nation, Israel, planted in Palestine, the ancient Jewish homeland, but one already inhabited by a different people.
The horrors of the situation, present at least since 1948, have reached new levels in the past eighteen months, and it is difficult to envisage a just and equitable solution which might deliver justice for both groups, not least since the Big Powers continue to meddle. We can only pray, and we have a duty and a responsibility to do so, tonight perhaps above all other nights since, as the question and answer of the Jewish Seder, or Passover meal, remind us, this night is different from all other nights.
We should, then focus on the Passover—but not only on the Passover. Every year we read from St. John’s Gospel, which is remarkable, in that his focus differs from that of the other evangelists. He has already set out His Eucharistic theology in chapter 6, so he emphasises the loving service of Jesus in washing the disciples’ feet, and the demand that we love one another as Jesus has loved us.
Here, the Sisters have already carried out the foot-washing within the community, but that doesn’t prevent us from reflecting on its message. We should be metaphorical foot-washers—but also we should be people who need to have our own feet washed. As the Church, we are called to be the People of Mucky Feet, people whose feet have gathered mud, dust, and dirt from tramping around in the service of others.
And if we are true to ourselves, we should be doing that tramping in the less salubrious places, and washing those feet which are most in need. Pope Francis has given us the classic example. Abandoning the tradition of washing the feet of cardinals—who may well stand in greater need than most of spiritual washing—he has taken the ceremony into prison where, changing the rubrics from “viri”, which means “men” in the sense of adult males, to “homines”, “people” without distinction, he has washed women’s feet as well as men’s, Muslims as well as Christians.
It is a demand made of all Christians that we be both foot-washers and people of mucky feet, but perhaps there needs to be a particular emphasis on priests, on whom the spotlight was turned this morning in the Chrism Mass. With fewer priests, often responsible for several parishes, traditional methods of pastoral care, such as knocking on the doors of everyone on the parish register, are no longer feasible. All the more reason then to devise new methods, and not to take refuge in the parish office, struggling full time with Safeguarding policies and Heath and Safety toolboxes.
Right, that’s two focal points considered. I reckon that two remain. St. Paul gives us, tonight, the earliest written, as distinct from oral account, of the institution of the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life” as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council described it. The Church makes the Eucharist, and the Eucharist makes the Church: by and through the self-offering of Christ in the Eucharist we live, and by it we are nourished.
Finally, we contemplate the sufferings of Christ which He endured on this night. At the end of Mass, the Blessed Sacrament will be transferred to the Altar of Repose. To me this always seems symbolic of Jesus’ journey from the supper room to the Garden of Gethsemane, and I see the time of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament as our spiritual union with the suffering Christ, sharing His Agony in the Garden, and His mock trials before the High Priest and before Pilate, our being one with Him in His desolation, as we prepare to share, tomorrow, in Hs journey to the Cross. There is indeed much to claim our attention tonight.
