by CCW | 17 April 2025 21:00
Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum and signals the beginning of the intensity of the Passion in all its fullness. The readings from the Lamentations of Jeremiah at Matins and Vespers today provide a graphic complement to the continuation of the Passion According to St. Luke and anticipate the Solemn Reproaches on Good Friday.
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow … [for] the Lord gave me into the hands of those whom I cannot withstand.” Lamentations begins with the sense of desolation and loneliness that our sins occasion. “I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath;” we hear in the evening lesson, “he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.” And yet in the desolations of Holy Week, what is remembered and called to mind is that “the steadfast love of the Lord never faileth, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.”
With Luke’s Passion, we have three of the seven last words from the Cross and in the late 17th century ordering of the seven last words by the native Peruvian priest Fr. Alonso Messio de Bedoya, Luke provides the first and last word, bracketing in a way our reflections upon the cross by gathering them into the motion of the Son’s twofold prayer to the Father: The first word is “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” and the last word is “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
In one way, Maundy Thursday is a great and complex melange of liturgies and rites, ranging from the King’s touch and the washing of the disciples’ feet to the institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, the stripping of the Altar, and the Agony of Gethsemane, among others. Yet, in another way, everything focuses on the Last Supper. Redemption and salvation are concentrated for us in the Eucharist as the place where Christ gives himself to us sacramentally on the very night in which he was betrayed.
Passion and Eucharist are simply inseparable. “Jesus Christ take[s] our nature upon him, and suffer[s] death upon the Cross for our redemption,” as the Communion Prayer states. We are gathered into the embrace of the Trinity as the high priestly prayer of Jesus in the second lesson at Matins from John makes clear even as the second lesson this evening points us as well to the examples of sacrifice and service that belong to the drama and the wonder of human redemption.
“He carried himself in his own hands,” Augustine remarks. Here he gives himself and provides for us in anticipation of his crucifixion. The novum mandatum, the new commandment, is the love of God realized in its fullness in the self-giving love of Christ. His whole life is concentrated for us in two ways: on the Cross and in the Sacrament. “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.” But only if we come knowingly in discerning the Lord’s body.
For what belongs to Communion is nothing less than our participation in his Passion and Death for us which is Life and Resurrection in the overcoming of all sin and evil. But a new commandment? What does that mean? Haven’t we heard the commandment to love God with the whole of our being – “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,” and “thy neighbour as thyself.” Yes but not as realized for us in the humanity which Christ has from us. In other words, the commandments only point to what we seek as belonging to the truth of our humanity but which we are utterly incapable of achieving on our own. What is new is what is accomplished in Christ and is given on the Cross and in the sacrament to live in us; “he in us and we in him”.
What then is required of us on Maundy Thursday? Luke makes it clear that it has entirely to do with our beholding, our looking upon the things of the Passion. The word appears several times. “And the people stood beholding” just after Christ’s first word, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Then shortly after Luke’s third word – “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” – (which becomes the seventh word from the Cross in the sequence of the Last Words), “the Centurion saw what was done, he glorified God saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.” And then? “All the people that came together to that sight,” to that spectacle or theoria, “[beheld] the things that were done”. Luke concludes: “And all his acquaintance and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.” The emphasis is on our beholding.
We behold the spectacle of human sin and wickedness but as made visible in the sacrifice of Christ. We behold sin and love. Only so can we begin to learn the radical meaning of what we have done and so learn the radical meaning of “the steadfast love of the Lord which never ceases.” It stands in stark contrast to the fickleness and inconstancy of our loves and our lives. Only in beholding these things can we begin to learn what belongs to the truth and dignity of our humanity. It means to behold all the things of his Passion and to begin to learn from them.
Fr. David Curry
Maundy Thursday 2025
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