Reflections on Holy Thursday.

 Today starts the most wonderful four days in the history of the world.   I say wonderful although they contained a great deal of pain and suffering and yet their story is far beyond our human imagination.    It is a story of love, but not a story of how humanity loves itself, but how the very Creator of humanity is so deeply in love with his creatures, you and I, that He came on earth to teach us and to suffer like us, and to give us hope in our own sufferings.    God became human, lived the life of a human, and then died in a way that he hoped would bring us the reality of his love.    He died tortured and bleeding and nailed to a Cross, and as St Paul said "To the Greeks, mere folly" and to us, if we are honest incomprehensible.

Today is Holy Thursday.   You might say the day on which he wrote his last will and testament.   so what did he leave his family and followers?   He had spoken of it in John 6, "Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot have life in you"   It seemed at the time a very gruesome statement and many of his followers left him then and there muttering to themselves that he was crazy and they should just leave him alone.   The statement seemed ridiculous and not even his disciples understood.   They just nodded their heads in a resigned fashion "Well if you say so it must be true, for you have the words of eternal life". 

Then on that last meal together they understood.   Jesus broke bread and said "Take this and eat it, for this is my body which will be offered up for you"    Then he took the chalice and said "This is my blood of the New and Eternal Testament which will be shed for you and for many  for the forgiveness of sins"  Now here is a remarkable thing.   It took the Apostles and disciples almost no time at all to understand what he had done.    Perhaps it was as they discussed the matter in the Upper Room before Pentecost, but as the Protestant Historian JND Kelly wrote "Eucharistic Teaching it should be understood from the outset was unquestioningly realistic,  i.e. the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Saviour's body and blood.   St Ignatius of Antioch" Kelly roundly declares taught " that the bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup his blood.  Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists denial of the real body.    St Irenaeus teaches that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus agains the Docetists and Gnostics.    More thoughtworthy is that never in the history of the Catholic Church was there any council or meeting where the teaching was ever discussed.    It is also true that in the early Church the Mass, for Mass it was, notice how Kelly used the words 'consecrated host".   JND Kelly  also refers to how the apostles reached back to the Prophet Malachi in the Old Testament "From the rising of the sun until its setting my name is great among the gentiles, and everywhere there is offered sacrifice. a spotless victim.    The conclusion is that the Apostles themselves said the first Masses and offered the Sacrifice of the New and Eternal Testament.

I hope that this evening people will receive Jesus with joy.   Let there be no doubt that the Last Supper was the First Mass.    Let us approach the altar with a renewed belief that our Faith in the presenee of Jesus was shared by the Apostles, and do not pay attention to false teaching.   This host is the Jesus who loved you so much, that were you the only person in the world, he would die all over again - just for you.