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| Last Supper,.14th c. Dominican gradual. (Karlsruhe, Germany.) |
This is a great feast day! It is the day we thank God for the gift Jesus gave us of the Eucharist. On the night before he died he instituted this Sacrament that allows us to be one with him in a sublime and mysterious way. Our union with Jesus in Holy Communion is beyond our imagination and it yet it is not our imagination; the whole of Jesus - body, blood, soul and divinity - is present within us. He hears our deepest thoughts, love, worries and desires with all the interest, concern and love that only a parent or lover has for another but even more. How blessed we are!
St. Thomas Aquinas, who composed the liturgy for this day, wrote the beautiful sequence Lauda Sion salvatorem. Here it is sung by the Benedictine monks of Clervaux, and here's an English translation.
And finally, here is a reflection of this great feast from St. Thomas himself:
No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion.
It was to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper. As he was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he left it as a perpetual memorial of his passion. It was the fulfilment of ancient figures and the greatest of all his miracles while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.
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