Sacred Tridum – Maundy Thursday – John 13:1-15

Even though it is called the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, there is no reference to the meal per se in the choice of this text. John is the only gospel, among the four, that focuses on the foot washing. The meal becomes the setting for the foot washing of His disciples; a meal in which He institutes the Eucharist, institutes the commandment of love, ‘to do as He has done,’ and institutes the priesthood through the foot washing ritual and a pastoral commandment to the eleven ‘newly ordained ministers’.

Interestingly, unlike the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), John holds that Jesus died on the ‘day of preparation’. This is the day when the lambs were sacrificed in the temple and this is the day for John on which Jesus, ‘the Lamb of God’ dies on Calvary.

Now before you start getting uppity and wondering how the gospels can be giving us ‘contradictory’ evidences, remember what the Gospel’s were meant to be; not biographies! The Gospels are post resurrection narratives, written by the evangelists in the context of their communities, to whom they were writing for.