My dear sisters and brothers, as we come together to celebrate this Mass of the Lord’s Supper on this Holy Thursday evening, we begin the Sacred Easter Triduum. What do we mean by the “Triduum?” Well, the word “Triduum” means “Three Days.” This Triduum, these Three Days that we begin this evening, are the  most sacred and holy days of the whole year for Catholic Christians.

To understand these Three Days we need to tell time the way Jesus and his apostles told time. For us, the new day begins at midnight. But for the people of Jesus time, the new day began four hours or so earlier at sunset. So a day didn’t go from midnight to midnight as with us, but from sunset to sunset.

So this evening we are just beginning the first day of the Easter Triduum. We begin the Triduum by being with Jesus as he and his disciples celebrate the Passover Meal. During this meal, they remembered the wonderful ways God had shown his love, forgiveness and salvation to them.

They remembered in particular that time in Egypt when the pharaoh refused to grant Moses’ request to release the Hebrew people from their slavery. When Pharaoh rejected God he brought upon the whole people of Egypt a plague which caused the death of the eldest son of every family.

God told the Hebrew people to prepare a special meal and be ready to leave Egypt immediately. Before that evening meal, however, the Hebrews marked the door posts of their houses with the blood of the lamb which had been prepared for their meal. The plague of death passed over every house that was marked with the blood of the Passover lamb.  God’s people were delivered from death.

The Passover meal was all about God’s saving his people from slavery and death. The bible gives us that great story of Moses and the people of Israel being led by God out of Egypt, through the waters of the Red sea which parted to let them through but flowed back to wipe out the army that was chasing them.

We Christians have always seen that story as pointing to Jesus whose own blood has saved us from slavery to sin and death and which brings us to our promised land of Heaven. When Jesus gave his life by offering his body for us and indeed for all people on the cross, he showed himself to be the one whom the Passover lamb points us to. The blood of the Passover lamb saved the people of Israel from death. The blood of Jesus, shed on the cross, saves you and me from death and gives you and me freedom and eternal life.

So when Jesus and his disciples gathered for that Passover meal, all of this was in Jesus mind. During the meal he did two very unique and wonderful things. First of all, He took bread and broke it and said:“Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.” By sunset of that day Jesus will have given up his body to be crucified on the cross. He did that for us.

Then he took the cup of wine and gave it to his disciples saying: “Take this all of you and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Before sunset that day, Jesus poured out his blood on the cross. He did this for us. And by doing so he brought about the forgiveness of our sins. This is the Sacrifice of the Cross.

Before he took the bread and the cup, Jesus gave thanks to God his Father. And so He made that meal a Eucharist. For the word “eucharist” means “giving thanks.” In this Eucharist this evening, the bread becomes the body of Christ given up for us; and the wine becomes the blood of Christ poured out for us. The Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross becomes present here for us.

The sacrifice of love offered by Jesus, his body, his blood his life, brought about the forgiveness of sins, our sins. All love is sacrifice because all love means giving up and pouring out oneself for the good of the person we love. Jesus gave up and poured out his whole living self for the good of you and me. In John’s Gospel Jesus says:“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

On that night before he died, Jesus gave to his church the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we celebrate this evening, that action of Jesus on the cross wherein he laid down his life for us, wherein he poured out his blood for us, wherein he died so that we may live forever, is made present here for us. It is made present here for us so that we can enter into it and become a part of it.

Not simply to behold it in our minds, or to be filled with awe in our hearts, but to enter into it; to be there. In his Eucharist tonight, we take our lives – whatever they are; our sinful, imperfect lives; lives at times filled with joy, hope and promise, but also lives filled with worry and fear, with pain, with discouragement and sadness. And we give these our lives to Jesus who joins them to his life which he offers to God in the perfect sacrifice, the perfect love of Jesus. It is the perfect prayer and it is made present every time we celebrate the Eucharist.

St. John would write in his first letter: because God has loved us so much, then we too must love one another. And this is the second part of the meaning of the Eucharist. After the supper Jesus performed that act of a slave – he got down on his hands and knees and he washed his disciples’ feet. As we heard in the letter to the Philippians on Palm Sunday, although Jesus was in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave so that we could be free. And he says to us:“I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.”

When we truly enter into the Mass, when we place our lives with Jesus in his offering of himself to the Father, we are touched by God and we cannot leave without the desire to do what Jesus the Christ has asked us to do: to serve one another, to forgive, and to love as much as we possibly can.