Today, Holy Thursday, which opens the Triduum, gives us two important rituals that reflect the heart and meaning of these holy days, these final days building towards Jesus’ death and resurrection.  These rituals are Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and Jesus offering his body and blood using the symbols of bread and wine.  Whatever angle one looks at these ‘sacraments’, clearly, they are an encounter of love, an encounter of mercy, an encounter of forgiveness, an encounter of a most complete self-gift that embodies God’s unconditional love.

Walk with the Community of Redwoods in our celebration of the Triduum.  Each day, from Holy Thursday until Easter, we will update this post with new details of our liturgy. Have a very Blessed Holy Week.  

May Christ's gift of self-giving love console and strengthen our hearts especially in this time of great suffering.

In today’s liturgy we behold Jesus’ self-gift in the washing of the feet ritual and in the Eucharist where Jesus offers his body and his blood for the world. Self-giving is an act of agape: unconditional love, the highest form, the deepest form of love…This is the diptych of today’s two rituals and of what we will be participating in.

Listen to the Chapter Talk here:

Sisters and brothers, we are being ‘summoned’; we are summoned to an ‘encounter’, to a living encounter with Jesus.   This summoning, as Fr. Casey told us on Palm Sunday, asks that we come with our whole being: ‘our minds, our hearts and our feet’.  The backdrop for our encounter with Jesus during these days of the Holy Triduumis God’s love.  With Jesus love will always have the last word and will be his orientation towards us as we meet him in this present moment.    The horizon of God’s love that Jesus embodies, which is brought to the encounter, meets the present horizon of our lives.  We encounter the expansive horizon of Jesus’ life and consciousness:  an horizon, which embodies the immensity of God’s love and truth and overshadows the very limited horizon of our lives where we strive to expand our minds and hearts to be more Christ like in our everyday living and in the choices we make.

Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 63:1-9 Community Rank
Chrism Mass: Is 61:1-3a, 6a, 8b-9; Resp Ps 89; Rev 1:5-8; Lk 4:16-21
Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper: Ex 12:1-8, 11-14; Resp Ps 116; 1 Cor 11:23-26; Jn 13:1-15