Holy Thursday:

Feast day : 28 March 2024

On the eve of his Passion, while still free, Jesus transformed His Last Supper with the apostles into the memorial of His voluntary offering to the Father for the salvation of men “This is my body which is given to you.” “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” The Eucharist that Jesus instituted became the memorial of His sacrifice. He includes the apostles in his own offering and bids them to perpetuate it, thereby instituting them as priests of the New Covenant.

New Commandment:

The Lord, having loved those who were His own, loved them to the end. Knowing that the hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father, in the course of a meal He washed their feet saying ”So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” John 13: 14-15 and gave them the commandment of love “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” John 13:34.

Institution of the Holy Eucharist & Priesthood:

In order to leave them a pledge of His love, in order never to depart from His own and to make them sharers in His Passover, He instituted the Eucharist as the memorial of His Death and Resurrection, and commanded His apostles to celebrate it until His return thereby He constituted them priests of the New Testament. “Do this in memory of me”. The command of Jesus to repeat his actions and words until He comes does not only ask us to remember Jesus and what He did. It is directed at the liturgical celebration by the apostles and their successors, of the memorial of Christ, of His life, of His death, of His Resurrection, and of His intercession in the presence of the Father.”

In the Eucharist Christ gives us the very body which He gave up for us on the Cross, the very Blood which he “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents the sacrifice of the Cross, because it is the memorial and because it applies its fruit:

“Christ our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper “on the night when he was betrayed,” he wanted to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be represented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit."

Passover:

By celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles in the course of the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning. Jesus passing over to his Father by his Death and Resurrection, the new Passover, is anticipated in the Supper and celebrated in the Eucharist, which fulfils the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the Church in the glory of the kingdom.

(Source: Catechism of the Catholic Church)