Holy Thursday
Readings:
Exodus 12: 1-8, 11-14
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26
John 13: 1-15
Reflection:
Tonight we begin the sacred highpoint of our year, one seamless liturgical event in three acts. A clue to the unity is the absence of a dismissal tonight, welcome and dismissal tomorrow and greeting at the Vigil. The unity of the Triduum reminds us of the paschal pattern of our own lives. There are times of celebration and shared memories; there is the mix of decline and deaths we endure – our Good Fridays; and the anticipation and joys of new life and transformations of our brokenness. Just as in this great liturgy, our lives cannot focus any one of these. We must recognise their interplay as Pilgrims of Hope with the sure expectation of a new heaven and a new earth.
Memory gives rise to hope. Being a Pilgrim of Hope is, in part, a ‘call to remembrance’ — a summons to recall and re-tell our small lives, our histories, in relation to God’s vibrant, life-giving story. That is what we see in tonight’s readings. The Jewish memory, Passover people “for all generations … forever”, is also our memory and is parallelled in the second reading. For us, as Dorothy Lee has said, the eucharistic remembering, ‘anamnesis’ draws the past into the present, so that the past events of salvation history become real for us in the here-and-now.
The Gospel of John, for theological reasons, places the supper before Passover. Last Sunday we heard that Jesus assumed the condition of a slave. Tonight’s he demonstrates this in his intimate and self-humbling washing of his disciples’ feet, a task in those times typically reserved for slaves. This act of service is the yardstick of discipleship of Jesus, a reminder that our remembering is not abstract but is a call to action which will keep drawing us towards dying to self and rising with Jesus.
John McGrath is a parishioner of St Brigid’s Marrickville.