[00:00] Holy Thursday, the first night of the Triduum. We are placing ourselves in the upper room with Jesus.

[00:30] We are placing ourselves in that time, the time of our Lord and His apostles. He's with them and preparing for His hour. His hour has arrived. His hour has arrived. The hour that He kept saying is not, the evangelist said, is not His hour. That's how He escaped death. He escaped His enemies, but now His hour has arrived and He is sorrowful, sorrowful for

[01:01] Himself that He has a lot of suffering ahead of Him and He sees all of it right before His eyes. There's a panorama of horrible torture and suffering and rejection and murder, death, and this is what our Lord has before His eyes and we will have what we have before our eyes too. Our Lord did everything for us. We are very much involved in this.

[01:33] We're not spectators, we're involved. Our Lord is suffering for you and me, for your sins and mine. And here He is at the beginning, really the beginning of His sufferings. Judas is going to betray Him right there before His face. Jesus knows and even prophesies it right in His presence, in the presence of Judas and then he goes off and does it anyway.

[02:04] Judas is there present in the Last Supper and Jesus is now in this Gospel, the washing of the feet. Jesus is washing his feet, Judas' feet, knowing what he's going to do. Jesus is showing His great love for His apostles. He's saying goodbye to them. He's giving His farewell and it's a very sad, sad night.

[02:38] How could He not be sad with Judas, Judas betraying Him and going off to His enemies and yet He has such great sorrowful love. He's sorrowful but He's very sorrowful, great love for His apostles, His friends and you and I are the apostles here. We are His friends, we are there and He's washing your feet. He's washing my feet, cleansing us all over through our baptism, through forgiveness of

[03:14] sins and confession. Jesus is washing your feet, all of us. He came to lay down His life for all of us and He would be ready to wash your feet, the Master, to do something that a slave would do. That was the slave's job to wash feet and Jesus lowers Himself to that point. He's already done that. He already lowered Himself to become a man, lowered Himself to suffer, lowered Himself

[03:49] condescended and He's now on His knees before you and me to wash your feet, to show His love for you that He will come down to your level, to raise you up, to raise us all up. That's the washing of the feet and it's a great sign of humility, condescension but great, great love. He's doing it out of love for all of us. He's down on His knees, washing your feet and then wiping them clean, maybe even kissing

[04:25] them as some mystics say, all the apostles, all of us, washing our feet, showing this great love which is just one sign of His enormous many signs of love for us all and so He does the washing of the feet and tells us all to do the same. Look to your right and to your left, to all your brothers and sisters.

[04:55] We need to wash their feet, show this great charity, humble ourselves before each other and He gives us the commandment, the new commandment "to love one another as I have loved you." Not to love your neighbor as yourself, not to love your enemies but to love your neighbor as I have loved you to the point of death, to the point of washing your feet and whatever else.

[05:26] "I will do anything for you," Jesus could say to each of us, "I will do anything, even lower Myself to this point." So the great act of love in this washing the feet and then of course He proceeds to go to the table and then make another great, the greatest act of love of His life to give Himself in bread and blood, bread and wine transformed to His Body and Blood to

[05:58] give Himself to us every day in the Eucharist, to give Himself to us and that's the covenant, that exchange, He gives Himself to us and we give ourselves to Him in a constant, lifelong covenant, this covenant, this marriage between Jesus and you and me. That's what it is. In this Eucharist that He's giving to them is the fruit of His death and resurrection,

[06:31] His suffering, death and resurrection. The Eucharist is that and it's happening before it even happens. He gives His Body and Blood to the apostles before His death and resurrection and the Eucharist is a fruit of that. The Eucharist is the fruit of the tree of life which is the cross, shows His divinity how He's outside of time, how He can do anything. He gives Himself to the apostles and to you and me there at that Last Supper as His greatest

[07:04] act of love for us and He continues to do it, continues to give Himself to us and we are receiving Him, we are taking Him, we are receiving Him. Do you want Him? Do you want Jesus? He wants you. He wants me. He wants us. The Eucharist wants us to want Him and He wants us to give our lives to Him, for Him.

[07:34] So He is laying down His life in this way in the Eucharist, instituting the Eucharist, making it possible and teaching His apostles how to do it and telling them to do it. "Do this in remembrance of Me." Make Me constantly available for the faithful to give Me to them and so He did and He continues

[08:06] to do and we celebrate that. We celebrate that today, the beginning of His suffering and death, the Last Supper, the Last Supper where Jesus gives Himself to us. So we take Him, we receive Him and we thank Him, which is what the Eucharist means, thanksgiving. We thank Him, we honor Him and we are here to immerse ourselves in the suffering of Jesus

[08:40] for these three days and we rejoice at the knowledge of His resurrection, His resurrection and that's what we're receiving. We're receiving Jesus resurrected, resurrected in His glorified body, His humanity and His divinity so we have that taste of the resurrection if we are united to Him, which we can be every day in the Eucharist and go to our death, receiving Jesus, having Him, we will rise

[09:15] with Jesus, we will go up with our Lord and so when we receive Jesus we think of the resurrection to where we are going to be united to Jesus forever. Amen.