Happy Holy Thursday to all of you!  Holy Thursday begins the Easter Triduum.  

Holy Thursday is significant for two reasons.  First of all, Christ washed the feet of his disciples.

Secondly, Christ celebrated the Last Supper, giving us a gift to remember him and to celebrate together as a community. 

The washing of the feet is only found in the Gospel of St John.  John doesn't have the institution narrative, whereas the other three do. 

Secondly, John wants us to see this picturesque scene about Jesus kneeling down and humbly washing the feet of his disciples. 

He then gave them a commandment to love.  "You call me teacher, you call me, Master.  But it is I who washed your feet.  Now you must do the same for one another."  

Today is also significant because it recalls the Passover of the Lord. 

And the Lord gives an invitation to the wedding banquet. : "do this in memory of me."  

In regards to the The Eucharist, we have to look closer to the two elements that are being offered, bread and wine, and what they mean.  Certainly, after consecration, the bread and wine become his body and blood.  But the Church recalls John 6, when Jesus says: "unless you eat my body and drink my blood , you will have no eternal life." 

Bread and wine.  Bread signify the things that come together.  To make bread, one must combine the ingredients.  

Wine is also known as crushed grapes. It signify the things that fall apart in our lives.  Our worries, anxieties, fears, doubts, disappointments, hurts and betrayals.  

There was a French Jesuit priest and theologian in the early 20th century named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was known for his work in paleontology. 

After his death - on April 10, 1955, which happened to be Easter Sunday that year - the publication of his many books marked him as one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of this century - a mystic whose holistic vision speaks with growing relevance to contemporary spirituality. 

Once, in China, without bread and wine for Mass, he expressed his deep love for the Eucharist in a Mass on the World. It begins thus:

Since once again, Lord — though this time not in the forests of the Aisne but in the steppes of Asia — I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world.

This is beautifully expressed because bread represents our labor, the things that come together in life, that which builds up.  Bread represents our successes, our victories, our triumphs, our conquest.  

And at the same time, wine represents our sufferings, things that fall apart, when life is bitter and sour.  Wine represents our failures, our losses, our grief, our pain and sufferings. The wine must also be offered to God.

It is not enough just to partake in the Eucharist without also offering our labors and sufferings to be united to Christ, the things that come together , but also when things began to fall apart.  To offer our bread and wine, united to The Lord.  

Jesus says: love one another as I have love you.  And Jesus says: "Do this in memory of me."