Maundy Thursday: “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
There is a remarkable complexity to Maundy Thursday. There is, of course, The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Luke which provides three of the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” is the first word. The second is Christ’s word to the one who was crucified with him who said, “Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.” Jesus responded, “Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”
Luke’s third word becomes the seventh word in the devotional tradition of the Last Words of the Crucified developed by the indigenous Peruvian Jesuit priest, Fr. Alonso Messio Bedoya, in Lima in the late 17th century. From there the practice travelled to Europe ultimately shaping the liturgical and musical devotions for both Protestant and Catholic Churches. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” With Luke, the words of the Crucified begin and end with the prayer of the Son to the Father in the Spirit of their eternal love.
There are as well other devotional and symbolic events on this day such as the washing of the feet, the giving of the Royal Maundy, the King’s coin, to the poor, the stripping of the Altar, and the watching at the Altar of Repose with Christ in Gethsemane. But most crucially, perhaps, Maundy Thursday recalls the Institution of the Holy Eucharist on the night, this very night, in which Christ is betrayed.
All these events highlight two themes: service and sacrifice in humility and love. Dramatic and moving, the liturgies of Maundy Thursday draw us into the vast and spacious mysteries of sin and love, as George Herbert suggested. They reveal to us our hearts of sin and they pierce our souls in sorrow and in love. They convict our consciences and move us to acts of compassion and service to others. All as grounded in the Passion and in the forms of our participation in the Passion of Christ. The three last words in Luke’s Passion contribute to our growing into the mystery of Christ.
You may have noticed the similarity of expression between the Palm Sunday Collect used throughout Holy Week and the opening paragraph of the Prayer of Consecration in the Prayer Book. God, out of his “tender love towards mankind,” the Collect prays, “hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross.” In the Eucharistic Prayer “Almighty God, our heavenly Father” out of his “tender mercy” gave his “only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption.” The Collect and the Prayer complement each other and emphasize the necessary and inseparable connection between the Incarnation and the Passion, especially on this day, and as centered in the Eucharist.
It is known as Maundy Thursday. Maundy is the englishing of the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment, the novum mandatum, the new commandment. “A new commandment, I give unto you that you love one another,” Jesus says. It means to love as Christ has loved us even while we were sinners. It signals the whole meaning and purpose of Holy Week as concentrated for us in the Passion of Christ and the means of our participation in his Passion sacramentally.
We confront our humanity in all its disarray and perhaps most tellingly in the pageant of the betrayals of our hearts made visible in our betrayals of Christ. Yet the Passion, certainly and compellingly on Maundy Thursday, reveals the greater love of Christ for us in two ways: his Passion and Sacrifice and the means of our participation through the institution of the Holy Eucharist. It is a radical act of love in the face of all human sin and evil. Jesus recalls and recapitulates the ancient Passover meal but radically transforms its meaning by identifying himself with the bread and the wine. He is “the Mediator of the new covenant” who builds upon the Exodus story of liberation and redemption by means of his body broken for us and his blood outpoured for us, “the new covenant in my blood,” as he says. “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.” Out of Christ’s death on the Cross – his body broken and his blood outpoured – flow water and blood, symbolic of the sacraments but only as the ordained means of our participating in his Death and Resurrection. God is life and out of the death of God in Christ’s sacrifice flows the means of our life in him.
The words of the Cross in Luke’s account teach us about that life as love in the motions of the Son to the Father: “Father, forgive them … Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” At the Last Supper, “he carried himself in his own hands,” as Augustine puts it, carrying us in all our sins into the eternal and everlasting love of the Trinity. As we shall see on Good Friday, he has, as the old Gospel hymn says, “the whole world in his hands.” The hands that are nailed to the Cross reach out across the centuries to embrace us in his love. His love outpoured in death is eternal life.
Holy Communion gathers us into his death and life for us. “Discerning the Lord’s body” at Mass speaks to the realities of his Passion and Death for us without which his life cannot live in us. It means being pierced in sorrow for our sins and pierced in love for his grace and mercy.
“A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
Fr. David Curry
Maundy Thursday, 2026