March 28, Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday (2024)

The Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary

Msgr Thomas Gervasio

In order to understand the significance of Holy Thursday, we must enter the Upper Room, the Cenacle, and contemplate what Our Lord did on his last evening on this earth. We must consider what happened in that room. Upon entering, we are struck by the tense, dramatic, atmosphere that pervades the room. Our Lord predicts his betrayal, the triple-denial of Simon Peter, and that the other apostles would abandon him to his persecutors.

And yet, in the midst of this woeful scene, Our Lord, St. John tells us, “would love them to the end.” And he would manifest that love by transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.

At table, Jesus takes ordinary bread and wine and by his divine word, changes them into his Body and Blood, the extraordinary gift that strengthens and enlivens the Church. It is the act of a God who desires to come close to us; a God who desires to nourish, strengthen, heal, and comfort us on the journey of life.

He had foreshadowed this moment when he fed the five thousand: “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world…whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” Now at the Passover meal on the night before he died, ordinary bread and wine become an extraordinary gift: the Holy Eucharist, not a mere symbol but Jesus Himself, in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

In his desire that this extraordinary gift endure to the end of time, and be passed down through the centuries to us, Our Blessed Lord looked to his chosen apostles—ordinary men—with all their foibles and inadequacies.

In that Upper Room are the first priests of the Lord’s Church. Our Lord bids them to do what he does in his memory and this command would be observed by all priests who would come after.

Thus, the same words that reverberated in the Upper Room millennia ago are heard by us again and again, at every Mass. In that celebration the ordinary, simple priest, does the extraordinary, acting as he does, in the person of Christ.

Holy Thursday prompts us to rekindle our sense of Eucharistic amazement in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and to pray for priests, who are, like the apostles, ordinary men…fragile earthen vessels, always in need of God’s mercy and grace as they strive to be faithful stewards of the mysteries of God.

We discover something more in the Upper Room when Our Lord takes a towel and basin of water and washes the feet of the apostles. He made that ordinary towel and basin the extraordinary symbol of humble love and service not only for the Church’s ministers but for all the baptized. “I have given you a model to follow,” he says, “so that as I have done for you, you should do also.”

We may find it curious that the Gospel for Holy Thursday is not that of the institution of the Holy Eucharist that we find in the other Gospels. but of St. John’s account of the washing of the apostles’ feet. It is only St. John who recounts the washing of the feet at the Last Supper. If the other evangelists describe the institution of the Holy Eucharist, it is St. John who is keen to show us the effect that receiving the Eucharist should have.

He shows us the attitude that flows from our reception of Holy Communion. He shows us what a Eucharistic life looks like. You see, the Eucharist is not only a mystery to consecrate, to receive, to contemplate, and adore. It is also a mystery to imitate. The great Sacrament of Love is always linked to the great Commandment of Love.

Dear brothers and sisters, entering the Upper Room allows us to see what appears so ordinary to be truly extraordinary. Every Mass is an entrance to the Upper Room and when we enter into it, our Lord and Master, who loved us to the end, points us to the great gifts he bestowed this night that have the power to make our ordinary life…extraordinary!