Sermon by Father Alex McAllister SDS                   Index

Holy Thursday—2003 Homily

Tonight we commemorate the Last Supper. We keep this commemoration in the very same way as we do every Sunday, indeed on almost every day of the year, with the celebration of the Eucharist.

There is, of course, nothing that we could do that would be more fitting. For indeed this feast is precisely about the institution of the Eucharist.

This celebration is also the opening action in that sequence of liturgies we call the Easter Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. This is the first of those liturgies but in a very real sense it sums them all up, just as the Last Supper itself summed up all that was to follow in the next three days.

For this is what the Last Supper does. In a deeply symbolic way Jesus took the bread and wine blessed, broke and gave them to his disciples. This is my body which will be given up for you and This is my blood which will be poured out for you those words he spoke tell you what was about to happen. And by the fact that they were spoken by Christ himself they make that saving mystery actually present.

The Last Supper and the events of the next three days are inextricably bound together. And our mass, that we celebrate on a daily basis, links us directly to the Upper Room. What happened there happens here. Christ is truly present and we participate in the Paschal Mystery.

There is nothing greater that we could do and it is right that we celebrate the Eucharist with all the solemnity that we can muster. We light candles, wear vestments, ring bells, sing songs, burn incense—we do these things to express our reverence and to acknowledge in some way the awesome nature of the event in which we participate.

The mass is the nearest we can get on this earth to the Banquet of Heaven in which we pray we will one day participate in all its fullness.

With the washing of feet we are powerfully reminded of the direct connection between the mass and the ministry of service. We are reminded of Jesus’ words: I came to serve not to be served. As Christians those words should be our words.

Our task, indeed our privilege, is to imitate the Saviour and this applies to the washing of the feet just as it does to everything else.

Christ did not come to save a few; he came to save all of humanity. Therefore we as his fellow-workers must reach out to the whole of humanity—our hearts filled with compassion and love.

Our reassurance is in the words of the hymn that is always sung on this feast day—Where charity and love are, there is God.