Homily for the Mass of the Lord's Supper

April 2, 2026

The burning bush at Mount Sinai is unlikely to be on the mind for most this Holy Thursday, but it lurks in the background. The most direct narrative connection comes from our first reading, the institution of the Passover, intended in the Church’s wisdom to parallel the institution of the Eucharist as a new and more perfect Passover. The Passover is the culmination of that relationship with Moses begun on Sinai, and which eventually returns to Sinai for the giving of the Law. In that first encounter with the fire that burns without consuming, Moses receives the Divine Name which is then held in reverence by the people of Israel.

In his Holy Thursday homily from 2010, Pope Benedict tells us, “The revelation of the divine name, then, means that God, infinite, and self-subsistent, enters into the network of human relationships; that he comes out of himself, so to speak, and becomes one of us, present among us and for us.” The mysterious and even forbidden holiness of the name is, he suggests, a sign of God’s closeness. He has entrusted his name to his people. To have a name is to be known.

The Holy Father continues: “According to sacred scripture, the Temple is the dwelling-place of God's name. God is not confined within any earthly space; he remains infinitely above and beyond the world. Yet in the Temple he is present for us as the One who can be called — as the One who wills to be with us.”

The revelation of the Divine Name at Sinai leads to the construction of the Tabernacle, which eventually gives way to the Temple. Both point to that “greater and more perfect tabernacle,” as the letter to the Hebrews puts it, which is Christ’s own Body. He is at once both priest and victim, both temple and people. It would be tempting to think that the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist is some kind of “foreshadowing” of the Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross, but this is a mistake. They are the same act of self-gift begun at the Annunciation. The Cross, and the Lord’s death, mark a completion in the temporal and historical order, a sign of the gift’s totality, but not of its limitation. So many modern forensic descriptions of the atonement, in their reduction of the Passion to a legal transaction, make the Last Supper, not to mention the entirety of the Lord’s life up to that point, a waste of time. It is no waste of time but a statement precisely of the Lord’s gift of time: the time to be with us. He has all the time in the world. He is the Lord of time. And for all time he has committed his life to ours.

One of the more striking changes, in this movement from burning bush to tabernacle to temple to Incarnation to Sacrament, is how the divine Presence becomes not more and more grand but, in this final stage, more subtle than ever. In his earthly ministry the Lord was, as Monsignor Ronald Knox writes, totally “unobtrusive.” Knox speaks of it as a kind of gentlemanly courtesy; the Lord is available when we need him, but he will not force his presence on us. In the Sacrament this is even more the case. We dress the altar, the tabernacle, the vessels, with beauty and splendor, rightly and necessarily to remember the reality behind the sign; but in itself the Presence could easily be passed by. The mystery remains veiled and ordered for the eyes of faith.

We speak often of the need to imitate Christ, but dare we imitate this particular form of “courtesy”? Knox again wonders: “To be always up in arms, always airing your opinions for the benefit of an audience which disagrees, and may be provoked by them, or of an audience which agrees, and may be bored by them…  to be continually offering your advice, continually taking duties upon yourself because the other person is certain to make a hash of them—all this is not to be guilty of any great imperfection. But you have not, to that extent, shown forth the image of Jesus Christ” (The Layman and his Conscience).

This incisive comment from 1957 is surely all the more relevant in the age of the internet outrage machine. Certainly I would not, and I think nor would Msgr. Knox, suggest that this tabernacled silence is the only aspect of Christ ever worth imitating, but it is certainly one worth remembering today of all days, when the Son of God stoops to wash his disciples feet, when he knowingly goes to the place where his betrayer is most likely to find him, when he quietly pours his heart out to his Father in the garden.

Is it not interesting how we call the place for reserving the Sacrament this evening the “Altar of Repose”? I’m sure there’s a history there, but for the moment let us pause on the word “repose” and its connotations. Is this a place of rest? In the Garden of Gethsemane the Lord prays in agony while the disciples fall asleep. “Repose” then could just as much be the lazy rest of the disciples or the constant beatitude of Jesus who, even in his human agony, remains in transcendent divine communion with his Father. But for us, in visiting the Garden and the Altar tonight, it is above all a place of silence. This leads of course to the silence of God on Good Friday, the appearance of absence and dereliction: My God, my God, who hast thou forsaken me?

It is very easy to suggest, if very hard to accomplish, that we should somehow imitate this silent waiting, this refusal to take matters into our own hands. Though some are called to a life of contemplation, many can only come at this partially, here and there — more readily on days like today. But we can all remember, at least, that the point of all this waiting and silence, for the Son of God, is Communion. That is, he is waiting for us to freely choose fellowship with him. God is waiting for us to take the risk of relationship. Though we, in Adam, and in Judas, betrayed him, he still took the risk. Let us follow him to the garden and wait patiently as he works in his quiet way the plan of our redemption.