This is the Holiest Week of the Church’s year and today—Holy Thursday—we remember an event that took place roughly 2,000 years ago: the Last Supper when Christ washed the feet of his disciples, instituted the Eucharist and the priesthood, and gave his disciples the new commandment to love as he loved. The Mass of the Lord’s Supper is the liturgical remembrance of that historical event.
Have you ever wondered what the relationship is between the historical event of the Last Supper that occurred 2,000 years ago and the liturgical remembrance the Church celebrates on the evening of Holy Thursday?
The relationship between the historical event of the Last Supper and its liturgical celebration has to do with a special kind of remembering. We begin our answer by looking at the biblical understanding of the liturgical celebration of God’s saving deeds, known as the memorial. For example, when Israel celebrated the memorial of the Passover, they weren’t just thinking about what happened long ago. The celebration made the event “in a certain way present and real” (CCC, no. 1363).
This Old Testament understanding of memorial pointed to and was definitively fulfilled by Christ’s saving sacrifice. At the Last Supper, Christ instituted the Eucharist and told the Apostles to celebrate it as a memorial until he returned. That means that every time the Eucharist is celebrated, the Paschal Mystery—Christ’s Suffering, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension—“is made present: the sacrifice of Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present” (CCC, no. 1364).
Think about it. In whatever parish you are in, whether you are at the 10 a.m. Mass on Sunday or the early morning Mass on a weekday, Christ’s saving sacrifice is present right there and right then. This is what we mean when we say that the Mass “is the memorial of Christ’s Passover” (CCC, no. 1362), and it is “a mystery which surpasses our understanding and can only be received in faith.”1
How is it possible that Christ’s Paschal Mystery remains ever present? When we think of historical events, we know that they happened once and then passed away. But the Paschal Mystery (Christ’s Suffering, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension) is different. It is a unique historical event. Christ, by his Death, “destroyed death, and all that Christ is—all that he did and suffered for all men—participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all. The event of the Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward life” (CCC, no. 1085).
The Church continues to present Pope St. Leo the Great’s (+444) explanation of how all that Christ did and suffered is now made present. He wrote that “what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries [the sacraments]” (Sermo 74, no. 2, quoted in CCC, no. 1115).
In other words, what Christ did during his earthly ministry he does now sacramentally. Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is unique: under the appearances of bread and wine, “the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained” (CCC, no. 1374). Christ’s real presence in the Eucharistic species does not exclude other types of presence, such as in the people gathered in his name and in the priest, “as if they could not be ‘real’ too” (CCC, no. 1374). Christ’s Eucharistic presence “is presence in the fullest sense… Christ, God and man” (CCC, no. 1374). Under the Eucharistic species, Christ is “present in a totally unique way… as a person.”2 This means that everything Jesus did during his earthly ministry—teaching, healing, comforting, feeding, freeing—he continues to do today in the Mass. The only difference is the manner in which he does it: then in a bodily manner, now in a sacramental manner.
And there is more. When the mysteries of Christ’s earthly ministry are made sacramentally present in the celebration of the Mass, we are able “to lay hold upon them and become filled with saving grace.”3 In the course of the liturgical year, the liturgy “unfolds the whole mystery of Christ,” from his Incarnation to his Ascension to the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.4 This is the work of the Holy Spirit, for “in each celebration there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present” (CCC, no. 1104). This means that the event of Christ’s life that is being celebrated is made present. The Gospel of the day is one indication of the unique mystery being made present. What is Jesus doing? Is he teaching? Healing? What we hear in the Gospel, we can ask him to do the same in the Mass.
The prayers of the Mass also tell us about the graces of the unique mystery being made present. Consider the prayers of the Easter Vigil. We pray that we are “renewed in body and mind” so that we can give God “undivided service.”5 We ask God, “Pour out on us, O Lord, the Spirit of your love, and in your kindness make those you have nourished by this paschal Sacrament one in mind and heart.”6
At every Mass, in the memorable words of Pope Pius XII, Christ still “teaches us truth, heals the sick, consoles the afflicted… abides in his Church forever.” At every Mass, we encounter “a Master to whom we should listen readily, a Shepherd whom we should follow…the Source of our holiness… living by his very life.”7
This is why the word that marks the Church’s liturgical prayer is “‘Today!’—a word echoing the prayer her Lord taught her and the call of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, no. 1165). “[T]he Church, especially during Advent and Lent and above all the Easter Vigil, rereads and relives the great events of salvation history in the ‘today’ of her liturgy” (CCC, no. 1095).
There is an example of this in Eucharistic Prayer I, the Roman Canon. In the narrative of the Last Supper, following the consecration of the bread, the priest says, “when supper was ended, he took this precious chalice”—not “the chalice,” but “this chalice.” Suddenly we are back in the Upper Room with Jesus. “In the person of the priest, Christ Himself stands at the altar… it is Christ Himself who is now active.”8
Christ present and active in the Mass today is the source of the Eucharistic amazement that has captivated the saints throughout history: “the sense of awe, love, and childlike trust in the goodness and power of the Eucharistic Christ, and a desire never to be parted from him.”9
We can now return to the question I posed in the introduction—the relationship between the Last Supper and this evening’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper.
In the prayers for this Mass, we find the answer. The opening prayer reminds us that we are celebrating “a sacrifice new for all eternity,”10 a sacrifice that is ever present and participates in the “divine eternity” (CCC 1085).
In a special insert in Eucharistic Prayer I, we hear a reference to the “today” of the Church’s liturgy: “On the day before he was to suffer for our salvation and the salvation of all, that is today…”11
In tonight’s liturgy, Christ continues his saving work. In the proclamation of the Gospel, Christ “today” gives us the commandment to love as he loved. Christ “today” washes our feet. Today Christ invites us, his disciples, to abide in his love (Jn 15:9)—in Mass, in the Eucharistic procession, and in solemn adoration. In tonight’s Mass, then becomes now.
The opening prayer for Holy Thursday asks that we may “draw from so great a mystery, the fullness of charity and of life.”12 May we each receive from this liturgy—and the Triduum—an abundance of charity and new life.
Father Randy Stice is a priest of the Diocese of Knoxville. He has an STL in Sacred Theology and an MA in Liturgy. Among other ministries, he has served as pastor, diocesan Director of the Office of Worship and Liturgy, and Associate Director at the USCCB Secretariat of Divine Worship. He is the author of Eucharistic Amazement: Experience the Wonder of the Mass (Pauline Books and Media, 2025), and three books on the sacraments.
1. Saint John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, no. 15.
2. Raniero Cantalamessa, The Eucharist: Our Sanctification, rev. ed. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1995), 82.
3. Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 102.
4. SC, no. 102.
5. Roman Missal, The Easter Vigil, no. 32.
6. Roman Missal, The Easter Vigil, no. 67.
7. Mediator Dei, no. 163.
8. Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, II, 203.
9. Eucharistic Amazement: Experience the Wonder of the Mass, Fr. Randy L. Stice (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2025), 17–18.
10. Roman Missal, Mass of the Lord’s Supper, no. 8.
11. Roman Missal, Mass of the Lord’s Supper, no. 23.
12. Roman Missal, Mass of the Lord’s Supper, no. 8.
