Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of The Sacred Paschal
Triduum. These three solemn days celebrate the greatest mysteries of our
redemption. The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church gathers and with special
celebrations keeps the memory of our Lord’s crucifixion, burial and
resurrection.
On Maundy Thursday the Holy Church begins the Triduum with
the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. When our Lord was about to be handed over to
death, He entrusted to His Church a sacrifice which was New for all eternity.
This was the New Covenant in His blood; the banquet of His love.
The central act of Christian being is the Eucharist. The
Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. Everything we seek to
do, seek to be, all the other Sacraments, all church ministries, and the works
of the apostolate, are all bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented towards
it. It is in the Holy Eucharist itself that is contained the whole spiritual
good of the Church, because it contains Christ Himself, our paschal lamb.
The most sacred Eucharist is both a giving and a receiving.
In this great mystery of salvation God gives Himself to us, and, if we are in a
state of grace*, we receive and consume Christ the paschal lamb, who sacrifices
Himself for us on the Cross. Albeit in a much lesser way, we also give; we give
ourselves in worship and prayer to God, uniting our sufferings and trials with
His on the Cross, and if we have done this worthily, He receives us into that
communion in the divine Life by which the Church is kept in being.
By the Eucharistic celebration we unite ourselves with the
heavenly liturgy. We anticipate eternal life when God will be all in all.
So the Eucharist, the Mass, is the sum and summary of our
Faith, our Christian life, and it is the most sacred and most mysterious act of
the Church, in which we have the greatest privilege of participating, in one way
or another.
Thanks be to God for His most ineffable Gift.
Fr Ian
* If we are in a state of mortal sin (by committing a grave
sin without coercion and with knowledge) then we cannot receive the Eucharist
until we are reconciled to God by the Sacrament of Penance. If we receive the
Eucharist unworthily we profane Christ and commit a further grave sin.
