Last Supper of Our Lord: A Continuous Ministry of Service and Love

Maundy Thursday: Commemoration of Lord's Last Supper: April 14, 2022

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8,11-14 | 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 | John 13:1-15

(Depiction of the Last Supper by Artist Lydia Susan Abraham courtesy: internet)
To listen to my audio-video reflections on YouTube, please click here

The Sacred or Holy Triduum as we call the three important days of the Holy Week are the revered days in the entire liturgical year. We begin the Holy Triduum with the Maundy or Holy Thursday, where we commemorate the Lord's Last Supper with his disciples. Good Friday commemorates the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Holy Saturday having spent the day with the mother of our Saviour in her mourning at the death of her beloved son, we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. 

1. Holy Eucharist: The centre of our lives

Holy Thursday, which we celebrate is indeed a life-transforming event in our faith lives. It is because on this day, our Lord instituted the Eucharist and by doing so instituted the priesthood. Moreover, on this eventful day, our Lord washed the feet of his disciples and called us to a model of service. Whether it is for a family person or for a religious consecrated person, Eucharist is everything to one's life. When Fr Pedro Arrupe (1907-1991), the former Superior General of the Society of Jesus, who survived the Hiroshima bombing in 1945 and spent the last ten years of his life in the infirmary because of a stroke that paralyzed him completely asked, "who is Jesus for you?" he replied, "for me, Jesus is everything" and when further asked, "what is Eucharist for you?" he immediately replied, "for me, Eucharist is the centre of my life." 

Perhaps, the answer of this servant of God, Fr Arrupe (in 1973 the TIME magazine named him person of the year) echoes the innermost feeling of every Christian. Eucharist determines our life as Christians. If there is no such thing called Eucharist, our life as Christians would have been boring and lifeless. In Eucharist, Christ comes alive to us. Here we celebrate his life, passion, death and resurrection. Here we eat and drink our Lord's body and blood. Here we repeat again and again the words of our Lord: "Do it in memory of me." We recognized the absence of the Eucharist and its graces when we encountered the ferocity of Covid-19. We felt the absence of something which is life-giving in our lives when we could not celebrate the Eucharist in our churches and parishes. We found ourselves in the absence of something concrete, lasting and eternal. In fact, the Eucharist brings light into the dark places in this world. The light of Christ is brought into the lives of the oppressed, the sick, and those who are vulnerable. Therefore, Eucharist is central to our lives.

2. Holy Eucharist: Christ becomes all in all

Christ came into our midst to enter into every human experience, except sin. Christ attained perfection as a human person through his experiences. As the letter to the Hebrews writes: "It was fitting for him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons and daughters to glory,  to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings" (Heb 2:10). Christ experienced the pangs of hunger; the want of sympathy from others; he had sleepless nights; he was weary from the toils of life; he felt every type of temptation that come to man; he was misunderstood, forsaken, persecuted, and was delivered up to death. In other words, he was in every way became part of humanity. St Paul writing to Corinthians says that God has made us "members of Christ Jesus and by God’s doing he has become our wisdom, and our virtue, and our holiness, and our freedom" (1 Corinthians 1:30). Jesus is now drawing us to himself. Therefore, we can be part of his body and blood, moreover, part of his wisdom, virtue, holiness and freedom, indeed!

The evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke emphasize the intimate theological connection of the Last Supper with the Jewish Passover.  What was usually celebrated as the liberation from slavery in Egypt by the Israelites now with Jesus, we have the festival of the lord of definitive Passover. For the evangelist John, Christ is the Passover. Jesus' death brings a new order. In fact, Jesus had eaten many a time meals with his disciples, as well as tax collectors and Pharisees, eating bread and drinking wine to the point of being called a glutton and a drunkard (Matt 11:19). Fascinatingly, the final and farewell meal of Jesus becomes in fact an everlasting, eternal meal indeed. All the more, Jesus invites us to celebrate the meal until the end of time. 

3. Holy Eucharist: A meal with a difference - final and definitive. 

What happens at the last Passover meal of Jesus with his disciple is completely different from the usual Jewish Passover meal. Here the story of liberation is recounted, bitter herbs and unleavened bread are eaten as symbols of the bitter life of Jews in Egypt and the haste of their flight to freedom. At Jesus' Passover meal we do not hear about bitter herbs or dough. We hear only of bread and wine. Jesus' words are pronounced not within a liturgical action as in the Jewish meal but at the distribution of the bread and wine. At the farewell meal of Jesus, something final and definitive happens between Jesus and his own. Here a new covenant and the sacrificial self-surrender takes place. Jesus had compared earlier on many occasions meal (banquet) to a reign of God, "I say to you that many will come from the east and the west to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 8:11).

With the eating of the final meal before his death, Jesus opens a new chapter, a new covenant of love; a new dawn is opened up. Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25). Paul's testimony puts us in right place here: "Every time, then, you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26-30). Therefore, every Eucharistic celebration becomes as we say in Advent, "Maranatha, Come, Lord Jesus!" Therefore the question that remains in front of us is this: What is the connection between the eucharist, instituted by Jesus as a sacrament, and the Last Supper?

The institution of the Eucharist must be understood in the context of the whole mystery of Christ. It cannot be reduced to what Jesus did in words and deeds during his lifetime in Palestine. The Eucharist, therefore, is a sacrament that is part of the totality of the Christ event. It becomes a continuation of what Jesus has been doing in his earthly life as a human person. So that now we may continue to do what he did. That is why along with Eucharist we have that model to follow of washing each other's feet "as I have done for you, you should also do." Jesus gives us a commandment for how we are to be broken and given to each other, by washing each other's feet. 

Questions for reflections:

1. What is the most striking feature that comes to your mind of the Lord's Last Supper?
2. What aspect of this scene strikes you most? Do you have a sense of why?
3. Does the character of Peter speak to you?

Prayer: 

Lord, I so desire for you to love me. I don't want to hold back, hold away from you. I don't want anything covered up, anymore. I want to be transparent and free before you. Wash all of me with your love. Lord, let your body and blood bring me into the most intimate communion with you as I celebrate the Eucharist. Fill my heart. Push out all of the fear and anxiety, all of the anger and frustration, all the pettiness and lust. 

Fill me, Lord, so that I might be filled with your peace and learn how to love others this way. Help me to give myself to those who are most in need. Help me to be self-sacrificing, thinking of their needs first. And, Lord, let me hear the cries, the hunger and thirst of so many of your people, not only close to me, but in my village, town, city and throughout the world. On this special day, let me taste your desire that we all be one, through our sharing of this Eucharistic love. We make this prayer in Jesus' holy name. Amen. 

- Olvin Veigas, SJ

12 April 2022