Humility and Service

It is a day that highlights some of the most important pillars of our faith: the institution of the Eucharist, the priesthood, and the washing of the feet, which reminds us that we should serve one another. The candidates for baptism and the elect, who will enter into full communion with the Church during the Easter Vigil, were present in the front pews.
 
Bishop Mulvey pointed to the reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians – the first account of the Last Supper: “This is my body, and this is my blood: We know that this is the true Body and Blood of Jesus.” However, we all have to learn how to live these truths and how to live the Gospel. “God – Jesus – died for us. We need to interiorize this reality.”
 
Humility and service, the Bishop continued, are two key words of Holy Thursday. Called to love one another, we need to be persistent: “At the beginning of today’s Gospel, John writes, ‘he loved them to the end.’” That measure should be our model: “loving to the end, not halfway.”
 
The solemn Mass continued with the washing of the feet of the candidates and the elect, the celebration of the Eucharist, and, at the end, a procession with the Blessed Sacrament through the Cathedral, before the Eucharist was brought to the side chapel. The altar was stripped, foreshadowing Jesus’ condemnation and death that we commemorate on Good Friday.