Holy Thursday Service
The most powerful moment in the liturgical year is that moment on Holy Thursday when the Host is removed from the sanctuary.
I remember the first time I experienced it. I was accustomed to walking into the sanctuary and being immersed in the Presence. It is such a gentle feeling that it’s easy to experience it without even being really aware of it.
On that night, Holy Thursday service was beautiful, as it always is. It’s so beautiful that it’s possible to float out of the sanctuary and into the night wrapped in a cloud of spiritual gauze.
But if you stay around long enough to step back into the sanctuary, the change will astound you. Experiencing this change is like a second, and in some ways, more intense liturgy of its own.
It Was a Revelation to Me
I remember it well. I stayed around to help the priest prepare the sanctuary for Good Friday. He had done this many times and was somewhat desensitized to the change. But it was a revelation to me.
I stepped back into the sanctuary, and it was like stepping into an entirely different room. It hadn’t been stripped yet, but it was bare just the same. The Presence was gone. It was just a big, echoey room. The change was absolute.
If you ever find yourself wondering if the Protestants who believe that the Eucharist is just a symbol might be right, or if you start buying into the atheist propaganda that it’s just a cracker, tonight is the night to learn for yourself that they are wrong.
You Can Feel its Absence
Walk back into the sanctuary after Jesus is removed from there and feel the emptiness, hear the loud nothingness of it. The Eucharist is a Presence you can feel, and when it’s removed, you can also feel its absence.
Holy Thursday mass is, for me at least, the most powerful mass of the year.
This is the night Jesus gave us the New Covenant under which we live today.
It is the night He gave Himself to us in the Eucharist, and the night He gave us the priesthood and the Church.
The Lamb of God
It is the night He gave Himself over to what it means to be a sin-sick mortal human being. It is the night He experienced helplessness and pain at the hands of sadistic human monsters. It is the night He consented to become the least of these in a world broken by sin.
It is the night He accepted what He had always known He had to accept and became the Lamb of God, offered up in our place in atonement for the brutality, depravity, and hate of our sins.
It is the night on which he was betrayed by one of His own, arrested, deserted, beaten, tried in a kangaroo court and handed over to Pilate.
It is the night of the Lord’s Passover, not just for a chosen people, but for all people. It is the night of the Lord’s Passover for all humanity.
A Sudden Drop In Temperature
And it begins for us when the priest carries the Eucharist out of the sanctuary. Christ was taken from the disciples in a violent attack on this night two thousand years ago. He is taken from us again when the priest walks past and carries Him away.
The sanctuary, without the Host, is just a big, echoing, empty room. You can feel the change like a sudden drop in temperature as a cold front passes through.
It is real.
It’s all real.
Jesus Christ is not a myth. The Eucharist is not a symbol. He was real. He is real. And He is with us here, now, in this time and in this place.
This is the night of the Lord’s Passover. If you are marked by the blood of the Lamb, even if you die, you will live.
He Will Never Abandon You
Jesus loves us — He loves you — as much as this; that He consented to become your sin before God and suffer the agony that is rightfully yours.
Even if everyone you know and everything you rely on in this world all turn against you, Jesus will still be there. He will never stop loving you and He will never abandon you.
You can trust Jesus. You can rely on Jesus. No matter what happens, if you reach out for Him, He will reach back to you.
Whatever happens to you and to me — to all of us — in this life, Jesus will see us through.
If I ascend to the highest heaven, You are there.
If I make my bed in hell, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, You hand will uphold me.
If I say “surely the darkness will cover me and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you.
For the night is bright is day, and darkness is as light to you.
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