Maundy Thursday, 2024

 

This is a most holy and a most joyful night: it is a night of family feasting in grateful remembrance of God’s wondrous blessings.  It is indeed a family night because the Passover feast was from the times of Moses not a temple feast celebrated according to minute details of ritual, but a family gathering in the privacy of one’s home, a celebration with family and friends.

On returning home for this celebration and after prayer the head of the family gathering had to consider himself a prince, decorating his table with the best food and the most acceptable wines: in fact it was his duty to prepare sumptuously according to the measure of his possibilities.   We are told in the gospels that Jesus reclined at table with His disciples for the Last Supper as we call it today.  This was prescribed for faithful Jews;  they would have been seated for an ordinary meal, but for this special Passover meal they had to eat reclining, stretched out on one’s left side with head towards the food; it was a symbol of the liberty they were celebrating, the liberty God had won for His Chosen People by the wonders He worked in Egypt and throughout their desert wanderings to deliver them from slavery and bring them to the freedom they now enjoyed.  They had much to be grateful for and this was the night on which they gave whole-hearted expression to that gratitude in accordance with the Lord’s command.  Each generation of faithful Israelites was taught to consider that they themselves had been brought out of Egypt, saved from slavery, by the Lord; they were not celebrating something that happened in the past to their fathers only, no, they had to realize that they themselves had also been saved by the Lord.  The sages, the wise men, of Israel, when speaking of this night’s celebration, tell us that when it is celebrated in these dispositions the God of Israel, the Holy One Himself, leaves His normal, familiar, entourage of angels and of the righteous in the Garden of Eden, and comes, this night, to watch with delight the children of Israel here on earth rejoicing in the deliverance He won for them, gratefully singing His praises and loyally observing His commandments.

This was an occasion to which Jesus had really been looking forward:

And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. (Luke 22:15)

We must be quite sure of this: the Last Supper was no sad occasion for saying “Good-bye” and our memorial of it too should be a festal gathering.  How on earth could Our Lord have “eagerly desired” to eat a sorrowful leave-taking meal with His disciples?  This was, on the contrary, something to be “eagerly desired”, something towards which His whole life’s work had been leading, something that would express the fulfilment of all His efforts and desires for His disciples and for us.  This was no leave-taking sorrowfully anticipating the end of a lovely relationship, it was the celebration and setting in motion of a new and wonderful future together:

And he said to them, “How eagerly I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

Why so eagerly?  Because this meal was both the symbol of, and the ultimate preparation for, that heavenly banquet celebrating the salvation brought by Jesus, freedom from sin and membership, as adopted children and members of Christ, in the family of God, where all can call Him “Father” and have a share in His eternal blessedness in the Son:

“Happy are those who are called to His Supper”.

That was the blessing the Son had come to bring to a humanity which had long been in darkness, had long been alienated from true happiness and life: a humanity created by God and for God, but deceived by Satan and enchained by sin; a humanity which stirred such compassion in the Father that He sent His only Son to share in and to save the weakness of human flesh by dying sinless and rising again; and in the power of His Resurrection pouring out His Holy Spirit upon those who would believe in His name, the Spirit who would form those disciples in the likeness of their Lord for the glory of the Father.

It was now so near to fulfilment; this was no time for sad reminiscences of the past but for ardent longings for what was to come: Jesus was indeed to suffer and to die but that was for a purpose which would surely come through His suffering and death.

Let us now just look at that suffering and death, which was so close at hand but which, Jesus refused to allow to deter Him:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:2)

It might have seemed that Jesus’ life was to be taken from Him by the superior power of death after having been betrayed and condemned by human treachery and hatred.  Had that been the case, then indeed, Jesus’ death would have been a tragedy and the Last Supper an occasion for agonizing farewells and deep-felt loss.  That was not what Jesus wanted and was not what Jesus was going to allow.  This meal and the morrow'’ crucifixion were to be occasions of deepest fulfilment, joy and love.  That is because at the Supper Jesus deliberately offered His coming crucifixion and death to His Father, because He would accept it and embrace it out of obedient love for His Father; it would not be the power of sin and death which would take away His life from Him, but rather, He was offering it, giving it, to His Father in obedience to His will and purpose for His Son made flesh.  Neither would that suffering and death be the tragic betrayal that Judas’ action would signify; rather that Passion and Death was dedicated and offered by Jesus now for our salvation, for love of sinful, suffering, mankind.  The whole tenor of tomorrow’s crucifixion was being pre-determined now, at this meal, by Jesus.  He would die out of obedient love for His Father, out of redeeming love for His disciples.

At the Passover Meal the Jews celebrated God’s wonders in Egypt which saved the nation from physical slavery; how much more should we, the new People of God, celebrate the wonder of God’s love for us in giving His Son for us?  How much more should we rejoice in the love which Jesus had and has for us; that love which led Him to endure the Cross and to scorn its shame so that He might enable us to have access, in Him, to our heavenly home:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Tonight Jesus rejoices that by dying He is going to destroy death and turn betrayal into supreme love; He rejoices that soon He will meet once again with His disciples in the supreme joy of a banquet shared among friends, for whom, in the meantime, He is going to leave this pledge and this food with the loving words: “do this in memory of Me”.