Holy Thursday

“He is always eating and healing, this Jesus. He is not a theologian.” My seminary professor, Fr. Paul Tarazi, made this comment regarding the Gospels and Jesus’ action with those around him. Always eating and healing. There is an intimate connection between the two which the Church manifests in her liturgical life and in her eucharistic gatherings. We eat to be healed. It isn’t thought but action that saves us.
The table of fellowship, the table where families ate together, was a central pillar to life in the middle east and in the culture where the Scriptures were written. Eating was not necessarily as clean and individualized and sanitary as we experience it today. It was a communal affair. There was one bowl which everyone dipped bread into, a shared cup, a low table where people reclined against each other. It was intimate. And so, to “eat” with someone spoke about your relationship with them. It was a sign of your communion.
Today, being Holy Thursday, the Church commemorates the institution of the “Mystical Supper” that Jesus held with his disciples. It is a momentous day in which many events are remembered: the Lord’s supper, Christ washing the disciples feet, and ultimately Judas’ betrayal. But it is the meal which has been handed down to us as the one event to do “in remembrance.” The OCA website describes the supper as follows:
“The liturgical celebration of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday is not merely the annual remembrance of the institution of the sacrament of Holy Communion. Indeed the very event of the Passover Meal itself was not merely the last-minute action by the Lord to ‘institute’ the central sacrament of the Christian Faith before his passion and death. On the contrary, the entire mission of Christ, and indeed the very purpose for the creation of the world in the first place, is so that God’s beloved creature, made in his own divine image and likeness, could be in the most intimate communion with him for eternity, sitting at table with him, eating and drinking in his unending kingdom.”
It is an amazing thought that the entire goal of creation was so that God could give himself to his creatures as food. The entire goal of all of history was to institute this mystical supper. My favorite portion of the post-communion prayers is the line “where the voice of those who feast is unceasing.” This is an apt description of what heaven might be: the wedding feast of the Lamb. Eating in the Kingdom of Heaven. Eating and Healing. He is always eating and healing, this Jesus.

Weekly Service Schedule

Sunday
9:10 a.m. Hours
9:30 a.m. Divine Liturgy, with coffee hour after

Saturday
6:30 p.m. Great Vespers (confession available)

Wednesdays outside of Great Lent
6:30 p.m. Vespers (confession available), class following

Wednesdays during Great Lent
5:30 p.m. Confessions

6:30 p.m. Presanctified Liturgy, Lenten potluck following

Feast Days
See the calendar or weekly email.