Holy Thursday Homily
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
April 17, 2025
The Promise of Exodus
When the disciples gathered around the table with the Lord in the Upper Room, what thoughts ran through their minds, what feelings filled their hearts? The disciples surely understood that things were coming to a head. Conspiracy had gripped their Lord and Master; his enemies were out to get him. Even so, as they reclined at table to celebrate the Passover, did not the disciples recall how God delivered his people from slavery of Egypt? Were not the words we read from the Book of Exodus ringing in their ears?
The Jewish people celebrated such sacred meals not only to recall the wonders of the past but also to ask God to fulfill his promise to set them free from their enemies and oppressors. So some of the disciples may have hoped that Jesus would silence the Scribes and Pharisees once for all and cast out the latest foreign oppressor, the Roman Empire. Others may have remembered Jesus’ prediction that he would be put to death but rise on the third day. Even if they dared to hope for such a thing, how could they fathom what it would mean? But Jesus knew that his Hour had come. He was there to fulfill the promise of Exodus. How he would do so exceeded anything the disciples hoped for.
“Until He Comes”
It is the Apostle Paul who to brings into focus how Jesus fulfilled the promise of Exodus. In one of the earliest passages of the New Testament, St. Paul recounts for us the celebration of the first Eucharist. “The Lord Jesus, on the night before he was handed over, took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’”
We recognize these words, for they are repeated at every Mass. In the power of the Spirit and by the power of the words uttered by the priest, bread and wine become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, the sacred Body of Christ sacrificed for our salvation on the Cross, the sacred Blood of Christ outpoured for our redemption.
In these words we also recognize the fulfillment of the promise of Exodus. For as we enter into the mystery of Holy Mass, and receive the Lord’s Body and Blood, we encounter anew the Lord’s Pasch, his passage from death to life. United to Christ’s sacrifice, we pass over, not from the slavery of Egypt to an earthly paradise. Rather, we pass over from sin to grace and from grace to glory. For in our human nature Christ has vanquished sin and death, and has enabled us to cross, not the Red Sea, but the chasm sin has created between God and ourselves, and the divisions sin has created in the human family. Passing over from sin to grace and from life to death: this must be our ardent hope when we partake of the Eucharist: that washed clean in Baptism and cleansed by the tears of Penance we might be continually transfigured, growing in the likeness of Christ until that day when the Lord comes again and our bodies, like his, rise from the dead. That is why St. Paul says that ‘as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.’ In the Eucharist our hope of eternal life is nurtured.
“Love One Another as I Have Loved You”
If Paul shows us how the Eucharist fulfills the promise of Exodus, it is in the Gospel of John that we re-discover how that promise is to be realized in our daily life as Jesus’ disciples. John recounts for us a moment in salvation history, a moment we dramatize again this evening, when Christ, the Lord and servant of all, knelt before his disciples to wash their feet . . .
The lesson is twofold. First, unlike Peter in his bravado, we must allow Christ to cleanse us. The washing of the feet symbolizes the cleansing of the entire person, including whatever it is that brings us shame and humiliation. We must trust in the Lord. We must hope in his power to cleanse us. Second, Jesus left us and example – we are to wash one another’s feet. That is to say, we are to forgive one another, especially those who have wronged us and we are to be at the service of others, especially those most in need. If Jesus, our Lord and Master serves us with humble love, we must do likewise. After all, we have been nourished by his Body and Blood and have thus passed from the death of sin to the new life of grace. To quote Pope Benedict XVI: “One who has hope lives differently!”
Adoration
As this evening’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper draws to a close, we will leave the warmth of the Upper Room and retreat to the Garden where the Lamb of God will take upon himself the sins of the world. The stripping of the altars and our retreat into the adoration chapel symbolizes our duty to keep watch with Christ on the eve of his Passion. We do so as a people of hope . . .Our eyes of faith see how Jesus more than fulfilled the promise of Exodus. Our liturgy dramatizes how to live as those as who hope and trust in the Lord. In Adoration, let us ask, with hopeful hearts, that the depth of the Lord’s love might dawn on us, so that we may join to his sufferings whatever problems, struggles, and pain we may be facing, thus to be transfigured from sin to grace and from grace to glory.