April 18, 2025 // Bishop

Bishop Rhoades’ Homily for Holy Thursday: All Are Called to the Supper of the Lamb!

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades

The following homily was given by Bishop Rhoades at Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday, April 17, 2025, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne.

Dear brothers and sisters, with this Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we begin the sacred Paschal Triduum of the death and resurrection of the Lord, the greatest mystery of our redemption. It was on this evening that Our Lord instituted the memorial of His Passover, the great sacrament of His love, the holy Eucharist.

It was Jesus’ intention to celebrate the Passover with His apostles. That’s why He led them to Jerusalem. When they set out on that long journey from the villages of distant Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem, Our Lord began to teach them that “the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Jesus was fully aware of what was going to happen. He planned the journey so that they would be in Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, the commemoration of Israel’s liberation from Egypt. We heard in the first reading from the Book of Exodus God’s instruction to Moses and Aaron about how the Israelite families were to observe that first Passover. They were to procure a year-old lamb without blemish, kill it during the evening twilight, and apply some of the lamb’s blood to the two doorposts and lintels of their houses. They were then to eat the roasted flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. God told them that that night He would pass over those houses marked with the blood of the Lamb as He went through Egypt striking down the first-born. This is indeed what happened in that last of the 10 plagues, which led to the Pharoah allowing the Israelites to go free. God also instructed Moses and Aaron that they were to celebrate a memorial feast of the Passover every year.

Last year, a Jewish family invited me to their home for the celebration of the Passover feast, now called the Seder meal. I was grateful for their hospitality and enjoyed the celebration. Parts of it reminded me naturally of the Mass: the unleavened bread and the wine, the prayers of praise and thanksgiving to God, and, of course, the lamb. But the lamb at Mass is not a slaughtered animal. It is Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, that we receive and consume under the species of bread and wine.

Jesus did something radically new at the Last Supper. He instituted the new Passover meal on the eve of His passion and death. Indeed, He did what God’s chosen people did at the Passover – He gave praise and thanks to God and He blessed the bread and wine. But He did something totally new with the bread and wine. He gave them a new and definitive meaning when He took the bread into His hands and said, “This is my body which is given up for you,” and when He took the cup of wine and said, “This is the chalice of my blood which will be poured out for you.” In doing so, Jesus revealed that He Himself is the lamb of the new Passover. St. John the Baptist had already prophesied this when, at the Jordan River, at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, he pointed Him out as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Though He was sinless, a lamb without blemish, Jesus went into the waters of the Jordan to be baptized. He was already anticipating the baptism of His bloody death, submitting Himself entirely to His Father’s will out of love for the remission of our sins.

At His baptism, when Jesus came up out of the waters, the heavens were opened: The voice of the Father was heard, and the Holy Spirit descended as a dove. When Jesus died on the cross, the heavens were opened for good – the heavens that man’s sin had closed. And in St. John’s vision of heaven, which we read about in the Book of Revelation, who is there being worshiped? The Lamb who had been slain! And He’s standing victorious because He had risen from the dead. An immense throng is there, “a great multitude which no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes, and peoples, and tongues.” This is the eternal liturgy, the liturgy we participate in at every Mass. It is the new Passover. The Eucharist is the sacrifice of the Lamb and the feast that anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. At the Communion rite of every Mass, the priest elevates the host and the chalice and says: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.” In the Eucharist, we celebrate the new Passover, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the Church in the glory of the Kingdom.

In the Eucharist, we receive the true body and blood of Jesus. It is truly “holy Communion.” We not only behold the Lamb of God, we are also called to His Supper. We eat His body and drink His blood. We become united to Him and to one another as fellow disciples of the Lamb.

Reflecting on this great mystery, Pope Benedict wrote that “the Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the Incarnate Logos, we enter into the dynamic of His self-giving. Jesus draws us into Himself.” Similarly, Pope Francis writes that in the celebration of the Eucharist we are “plunged into the furnace of God’s love.”

The Eucharist is Jesus’ gift of Himself and an inexhaustible source of love. Engraved and rooted in this sacrament is the new commandment that Jesus gave us at the Last Supper: “He said: I give to you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” By washing the apostles’ feet, Jesus presents them with an example of loving service. He says to them, “If I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” “Jesus established an intimate connection between the Eucharist, the sacrament of His sacrificial gift, and the commandment of love, which commits us to welcoming and serving our brothers and sisters” (Pope St. John Paul II). Every time we receive holy Communion, we receive the grace to love one another. Strengthened by Christ’s love, we are equipped to love others in turn, to serve others, to wash the feet of others. In so doing, by living Eucharistic lives, we extend Christ’s kingdom of love in the world.

My brothers and sisters, Catholic spirituality is a Eucharistic spirituality. It involves active participation at Mass and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, but it also embraces the whole of our life. It includes obeying Jesus’ command, “Do this in memory of me,” by celebrating the Holy Eucharist and His exhortation to wash one another’s feet by loving and serving others. When we do so, we are worshipping the Lord in spirit and in truth, offering authentic praise to God and to the Lamb, joining in the praise of all the saints and angels, hoping to share in their glory at the banquet feast of heaven! How blessed we are who are called to be called to the Supper of the Lamb!