ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Friends in our Lord Jesus Christ,

This morning at our Chrism Mass so many people of the Archdiocese assembled here in the Cathedral Basilica with hundreds of our priests. It was truly a wonderful manifestation of faith in the Eucharist and in the priesthood. This evening you have gathered here with faith and love to honor the great mystery of the Eucharist and to honor Christ’s plan of the priesthood. I am deeply grateful to you for the faith that has brought you here, for the faith that you express through your participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

This evening the Church suggests explicitly that the priest speak about three topics or three different aspects of the Feast of Holy Thursday, namely:

- The Eucharist itself, which is both
a Sacrifice and the Real Presence of Christ;
- The priesthood of Christ; - Loving service in the Church after the example of Christ.

Today is, in effect, the anniversary of the institution of the Eucharistic Sacrifice and Meal. It is also the anniversary of the priesthood: the day Jesus gave this great gift to His Church. But neither the Eucharist nor the priesthood are understood without understanding the love that was in the heart of Jesus and showed itself in loving service to His disciples.

I.

Our reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians speaks to us about the Last Supper. It describes what Jesus did at the Last Supper, how He took bread and wine and changed them into His body and blood, thereby establishing forever a sacramental memorial of Himself and of His death.

Saint Paul has those spectacular words: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes!” For two thousand years the Church teaches us that what Jesus did at the Last Supper was to give us a true sacrifice and a permanent sacrament of His real presence. The sacrifice of Calvary was sacramentally anticipated on Holy Thursday, just as it is now sacramentally re-presented at every Mass. As we celebrate the memorial of the Last Supper we truly proclaim the Death of Jesus. And the Death of Jesus is the great sacrifice of Himself that culminates in the Resurrection and brings life to the world.

The Lord’s intention at the Last Supper requires us to celebrate it until He comes again in glory. Jesus said explicitly (and we must never forget it): “Do this in memory of me.”

These words of Saint Paul were written some twenty years or so after Jesus died. This is the first written record of how Jesus celebrated the Eucharist. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke will later record the same event. And for all the intervening centuries the Church has offered up the Eucharist in memory of Christ and in memory of the love that inspired Him to give His life in sacrifice. The Eucharist remains forever the sacramental memorial of the Lord’s Supper and His paschal Sacrifice.

II.

The second theme that we celebrate today is the priesthood of Jesus—that great gift which He left to His Church. It is through the priesthood that the Eucharist is perpetuated. It is through the priesthood that all of us share in the Eucharist.

This evening, at our Mass I would ask you in your Christian lives always to have a great esteem for this gift of Christ’s priesthood and a great support and affirmation for the priests who share in the priesthood of Jesus, beginning with the priests in your parish. They all need your prayers so that they will be faithful to their priestly vocation until death.

At the same time I would ask all of you to communicate through your lives this esteem to our young people that they may understand Christ’s plan for His Church. I would ask you to pray that young men will be attracted to this gift of Christ, to this special form of service in the Church, so that Christ’s plan may go forward and the Death of Christ be renewed in the Eucharist until He comes in glory!

III.

The third theme that the Church suggests for our consideration this evening is the theme of loving service. In the Gospel we read those words about Jesus that “He loved his own in the world and he would show his love for them to the end.”

It was in the context of this love that, at the Last Supper, Jesus took off His cloak, knelt down, and washed the feet of His disciples. The Church continues this ritual in our Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper, but the Church is very eager for us to understand the deepest meaning of this gesture.

This gesture of loving service to His disciples was an expression of Christ’s love for them. He found a gesture that would express that love in an act of service, and at the same time would challenge all generations of Christians to find every act of service possible to express their love, the love that they had learned from Him, their love for one another.

At the core of our celebration tonight is the love of Jesus: the love that inspired Him to give us the Eucharist, the love that urged Jesus to give us the gift of the priesthood, the love of Jesus that wanted to express itself in the humble service of kneeling before His disciples in order to teach them by His example how they were to act.

Christ has left this gesture also as an incentive to the creativity of the Church so that throughout the centuries the Church will find every means possible to convey the love that Christ had in His heart for His people. The Church will always remember that Jesus said: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Tonight our whole celebration comes together. It comes together in the challenge that we receive from Jesus Christ: the challenge to celebrate the Eucharist worthily. And from the Eucharist we receive the strength and the power to go out and to show its meaning in the service that we pledge to one another.

This is the final challenge of Holy Thursday: the love of Christ that urges us on, first to recognize His love, to proclaim His gift of the Eucharist and the priesthood, and then to find every creative means possible to serve one another in the love that comes from His heart. This, dear Friends, is the deepest meaning of our Holy Thursday celebration: to imitate Jesus, who said: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” Amen.