25 March 2027 · Latin Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malankara Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” John 13:1
Tonight the Church enters the three most holy days of the year. Lent ends quietly before this evening Mass, and the Easter Triduum begins: the Lord's Supper, his Passion and death, his rest in the tomb and his Resurrection, celebrated as one great feast over three days. There is no final blessing tonight, and no greeting at the start of tomorrow's liturgy; the Church simply keeps vigil until the Easter Vigil ends with the Alleluia. Earlier today, or on another day this week, each bishop gathers his priests at the cathedral for the Chrism Mass. There the oils used all year for Baptism, Confirmation, the Anointing of the Sick and Holy Orders are blessed, and the priests renew the promises of their ordination. The Gospel of that Mass is Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.” From the one Anointed, Christ, the anointing flows into the whole Church.
The first reading of the evening takes us back to Egypt, to the night of liberation. Each household is to take a lamb without blemish, slaughter it at twilight, put its blood on the doorposts and eat it in haste, “your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand.” “It is the passover of the LORD… when I see the blood, I will pass over you.” This night was to be “a day of remembrance… a perpetual ordinance.” The Jewish people have kept it faithfully to this day, and Jesus kept it with his disciples. Into this ancient memorial of freedom he poured a new meaning. He is the Lamb without blemish; his blood marks those who are saved; his Passover, from death to life and from this world to the Father, sets free not one nation from Pharaoh but every human being from sin and death. As St Paul says, “our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.”
Paul's account of the Last Supper is the oldest we have, written about twenty-five years after that night: “the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood.’” These words are not a parable. The Church believes, as she has always believed, that by the power of Christ's word and the Holy Spirit the bread and wine become his true Body and Blood, while their appearance remains (Catechism 1374–1376). The Mass is not a new sacrifice added to the cross; it makes present the one sacrifice of Calvary, so that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” And with the command “Do this,” Jesus made the apostles priests of the New Covenant, so that this sacrifice would be offered “from the rising of the sun to its setting” (Malachi 1:11). Tonight we thank God for the gift of the Eucharist and for the gift of the priesthood.
St John does not tell the institution of the Eucharist. In its place he tells what it means. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Jesus rises from the table, takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, pours water into a basin and washes the feet of his disciples, the work of a slave. Peter protests: “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answers: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” The washing is a sign of the cross that is coming, where the Lord will be stripped and will pour out his life to cleanse us. And it is a command: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example.” The Eucharist and the towel belong together. Whoever receives the Body given for us must become bread broken for others.
Tonight's liturgy ends not with a dismissal but with a procession. The Blessed Sacrament is carried to a place of repose, and the people stay to watch with the Lord, remembering his words in Gethsemane: “could you not keep awake with me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40). The altar is stripped, and the church grows bare and silent. In 2027 Holy Thursday falls on 25 March, the day on which the Church usually celebrates the Annunciation, when the Word became flesh in the womb of Mary. The feast is moved this year to Monday 5 April. Yet the two mysteries meet: the body that Mary gave to the Son of God at Nazareth is the Body he gives us tonight in the Upper Room. Let us watch with him, and love as he has loved us.
Theme: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
Holy Thursday: the Passover Lamb, the gift of the Eucharist, the gift of the priesthood and the towel of love.
“The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” Exodus 12:13
“For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.” 1 Corinthians 5:7
Apply: Before Communion tonight, say slowly: Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world; have mercy on me.
“Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “See the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”” Exodus 24:8
“the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”” 1 Corinthians 11:23–24
Apply: Stay at the place of repose tonight and adore the Lord truly present.
“For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering;” Malachi 1:11
“but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:24–25
Apply: Write a short note of thanks to a priest who has served you, and pray daily this Easter season for vocations.
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”” Isaiah 52:7
“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” John 13:14–15
Apply: Do one humble service at home tonight, and one for a poor or sick person during the Easter Octave.
Jesus is the true Passover Lamb; he gives us his Body and Blood and the priests who offer his sacrifice.
He loves us to the end, washes our feet and sends us to love one another in the same way.
Take-home resolution: Watch one hour with the Lord tonight, and take up the towel of service tomorrow.
Dear brothers and sisters, tonight the Church enters the holiest days of the year. Lent is over; the Triduum has begun. And it begins at a table. The first reading takes us to Egypt: take a lamb without blemish, put its blood on the doorposts, eat it in haste with your sandals on. It is the passover of the LORD… when I see the blood, I will pass over you (Exodus 12:11, 13).
Jesus kept that Passover with his disciples. But on that night he became the Lamb. St Paul writes: on the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And the cup: this cup is the new covenant in my blood (1 Corinthians 11:23–25).
These are not just beautiful words. When the priest says them at the altar, Christ himself acts, and the bread and wine become his true Body and Blood. The sacrifice of the cross is made present among us. That is why we kneel, why we prepare for Communion with a clean heart, and why we stay with him tonight in adoration.
Do this, he said. With those words he gave us priests. Tonight let us thank God for every priest who has baptised us, absolved us and fed us. And let us pray that young men in our parishes may hear his call.
Then St John tells us what the Eucharist means. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end (John 13:1). Jesus rises from the table, ties a towel around himself and washes their feet. Peter protests, but Jesus says: unless I wash you, you have no share with me. And then: if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet (John 13:14).
In a moment the priest will kneel and wash feet, as Jesus did. Then we will carry the Lord to the place of repose, and the altar will be stripped bare. Stay with him tonight. Could you not keep awake with me one hour? And tomorrow, at home and at work, take up the towel. The one who receives the Body given for us must become bread broken for others. Amen.
Children, tonight Jesus gave us a wonderful gift. At his Last Supper he took bread and said: this is my body. Every time we go to Mass, Jesus gives himself to us in Holy Communion!
Then Jesus knelt down and washed his friends' feet, like a servant. He wants us to help one another too. Tonight, help at home without being asked, and say thank you to Jesus for the Holy Mass.
O God, who have called us to participate in this most sacred Supper, in which your Only Begotten Son, when about to hand himself over to death, entrusted to the Church a sacrifice new for all eternity, the banquet of his love, grant, we pray, that we may draw from so great a mystery, the fullness of charity and of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. Let us also pray: Lord Jesus, on the night you were betrayed you gave us your Body and Blood, you gave us priests, and you washed our feet. Keep us with you in Gethsemane tonight, make us one at your table, and send us out to wash one another's feet. Amen.
With this evening Mass Lent ends and the Paschal Triduum begins. The Church hears three readings about one night. In Exodus a family eats a lamb with sandals on, and the blood on the door is its protection. In Corinthians, the oldest written account of the Eucharist, Jesus takes bread and a cup on the night of his betrayal. In John he takes a towel and a basin, and John’s account of the supper does not describe the bread and the cup at all, for he has placed the meaning of the night in the washing of feet.
Psalm 116 joins them: “I will lift up the cup of salvation”. Passover, Eucharist and service are one mystery. The key words are memorial, covenant and to the end.
Setting.
Nine plagues have not moved Pharaoh. Before the last and most terrible, God gives Israel not a battle plan but a meal. The law of Passover is set into the story itself, so that every later generation that keeps it will find itself inside that night. The reading leaves out vv. 9–10, on how the lamb is cooked and what is done with any that remains.
Many scholars think that behind this feast lie an older shepherds’ spring rite and a farmers’ feast of unleavened bread, which Israel joined and filled with the memory of the Exodus. Whatever its earlier history, the text’s own claim is clear: this meal belongs to what God did.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household.” (12:3)
The first Passover is celebrated at home. Salvation comes to Israel as a people, and to each household within it.
“They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel” (12:7)
Blood is life in biblical thought (Leviticus 17:11). Here it marks a house as belonging to God. The Church has heard in these verses the protection of the blood of Christ.
“your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly.” (12:11)
People who eat like this are travellers. The word for “hurriedly” (ḥippāzôn) comes to mark the Exodus itself. The Eucharist too is food for those on the way, and we call the last Communion of a dying person Viaticum, food for the journey.
“when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you” (12:13)
Note who sees: God does. The sign is for them, as the verse says, and God keeps his word to those who trust it.
“This day shall be a day of remembrance for you.” (12:14)
The feast is still kept by the Jewish people today, for whom it remains a living gift from God.
How the Church reads it.
St Paul writes: “our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). St Melito of Sardis, in a second-century Paschal homily, reads the whole night as a figure of Christ, the true lamb (in substance). The Catechism teaches that by celebrating the Last Supper in the course of the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning (CCC 1340). It also takes the biblical idea of memorial as the key to the Mass: the saving event is made present (CCC 1363–1364). God’s covenant with Israel has not been revoked (CCC 121), and the Christian reading of this night honours it as the root from which we draw.
Setting.
Paul writes to Corinth from Ephesus (16:8), around the middle of the fifties. So this is the oldest written account of the Lord’s Supper that we have, earlier than any of the Gospels. And Paul was not the first to say it, because he is passing on a tradition he had already handed on when he founded the church there.
He quotes it to correct a scandal. In Corinth, the rich were eating well at the assembly while the poor went hungry (11:17–22). A Eucharist that despises the poor, he says, is not really the Lord’s Supper (11:20). The warning to those who eat unworthily follows straight after our reading (11:27–29).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,” (11:23)
Paul uses the terms of Jewish teaching for handing on a tradition. He means that this comes from Jesus, and that he has not invented it.
““This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”” (11:24)
A note on the text. Some later manuscripts add “broken” to “for you”; the oldest do not. The Council of Trent teaches that with “Do this” Christ made the apostles priests of the New Covenant (Session 22, canon 2; CCC 611).
““This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (11:25)
“Covenant in blood” recalls Sinai (Exodus 24:8). “New covenant” is the promise of Jeremiah 31:31. Before his death Jesus interprets it as the sealing of God’s covenant.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (11:26)
The Mass faces two ways: back to the cross and forward to the return. In the Roman Mass the people answer in similar words after the consecration: “We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your Resurrection until you come again.”
How the Church reads it.
St John Paul II opened his last encyclical with the words “The Church draws her life from the Eucharist” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia 1), and he dated it on a Holy Thursday. The Second Vatican Council describes the Mass as the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection, a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47). The Catechism gathers this teaching: the Eucharist is a sacrifice because it makes present the sacrifice of the cross (CCC 1366), and the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice (CCC 1367).
Setting.
With 13:1 the Gospel of John turns. Up to now, his “hour” has been coming. Now it has come. John tells of the last evening at great length (chapters 13–17), and in that account there is no word over bread and cup. The Bread of Life discourse (chapter 6) has already given the teaching. What he gives us here is the same love, shown with a basin.
Washing feet was a service of hospitality on dusty roads, usually done by a servant, and a disciple might do it for a teacher. It was not the custom for a teacher to do it for his disciples.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (13:1)
John has used the verb “to love” sparingly up to now; in chapters 13–17 it comes far more often. CCC 1337 and 616 begin from this verse: it is love that gives the sacrifice its worth.
“got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.” (13:4)
Compare Philippians 2:6–8: “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave”. John shows in an action what that hymn sings. Note v. 3: he does this knowing the Father has given all things into his hands. His humility does not forget who he is.
““Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”” (13:8)
Peter’s refusal seems humble, but in fact he wants to decide how he will be loved. Receiving is the first thing a disciple must learn.
““One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.” (13:10)
A note on the text. “Except for the feet” is lacking in some important witnesses, and scholars disagree about whether it is original. St Augustine reads it as baptism, which is once, and the daily need for forgiveness of sins (in substance).
“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” (13:14)
Judas too has had his feet washed: see v. 11. Whatever “one another” means, it does not exclude the one who will wound us. St Augustine says that Christians wash one another’s feet whenever they forgive and bear with each other (in substance).
How the Church reads it.
The Church has kept this command in the most literal way in the rite called the Mandatum. The word comes from “a new commandment” (mandatum novum, 13:34). The Catechism places it beside the institution of the Eucharist: he washed their feet and gave them the commandment of love, then left a pledge of that love (CCC 1337). The altar and the basin belong together. To share in the Mass and refuse to serve would contradict what we celebrate, as Paul told the Corinthians. Christian priesthood takes its form from this night: the one who stands at the altar in the person of Christ is one who has been told to kneel.
Did Jesus really mean “This is my body”, or only a symbol?
The Church believes he meant what he said. Paul, in the same chapter, says that one who eats unworthily “will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord” (11:27), which would make no sense if it were a mere sign. The Catholic Church teaches that Christ is truly, really and substantially present, and that the whole substance of bread and wine is changed into his Body and Blood, which is named transubstantiation (Council of Trent; CCC 1374, 1376).
Is every Mass a new sacrifice of Christ?
No. Christ died once for all (Hebrews 9:26–28). The Mass does not repeat the cross or add to it. It makes that one sacrifice present, offered now in an unbloody manner, with the same priest and the same victim (CCC 1366–1367).
Did Jesus wash the feet of Judas?
The text does not make an exception. Verses 10–11 say that “not all of you are clean” and that he knew who would betray him, and Judas leaves only later (13:30). So John’s account implies that Judas’s feet were washed too, in the same way.
In the Roman Rite this Mass is the door of the Triduum: the Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year say that the Triduum begins with it, and that Lent ends before it. Priests in many places have already gathered around their bishop at the Chrism Mass, which may be held in the morning or on an earlier day. The Gloria is sung with bells, which then fall silent until the Vigil. After the homily there may be the washing of feet; since 2016, those chosen may be drawn from all the people of God. During the procession of gifts, gifts for the poor may be brought, and Ubi caritas may be sung, which says that where true charity is, God is there. After Communion the Blessed Sacrament is carried to a place of repose, with the Pange lingua traditionally ascribed to St Thomas Aquinas, and the faithful stay in adoration. The altar is then stripped. There is no dismissal: the liturgy continues tomorrow.
This year 25 March falls on Holy Thursday. The Solemnity of the Annunciation therefore gives way, and is kept after the Octave of Easter.