Journey to Easter: Following the example of Jesus on Holy Thursday
“Tonight, God seems determined to teach us table manners,” Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., told those gathered at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart for the Holy Thursday Mass.
The Easter Triduum — starting from the evening of Holy Thursday and continuing through Easter Sunday evening — is the summit of the Church’s liturgical year. At the Holy Thursday evening Mass, the Church recalls the Last Supper, when Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist and the priesthood.
The liturgy also recalls another unexpected action that occurred that night, recounted in the Gospel of John, when Jesus washed the feet of his stunned disciples. “The disciples must have looked and they must have squirmed in their seats,” Cardinal Tobin said in his homily, delivered in Spanish and English, “because Peter cried out, ‘You shouldn’t do this to me!’”
Cardinal Tobin then reminded everyone of the question that Jesus asked his disciples: Have you understood what I have just done for you?
“Jesus has set the example for us on how we are to live our lives — as servants,” Cardinal Tobin continued, “because he said, ‘As I have done, so you must do.’ This is Jesus’ version of Eucharistic etiquette. If we eat at the table he has prepared, this is how we are to live.”
An immense love
The cardinal then pointed to Pope Francis’ contemporary version of Jesus’ example:
“Since his papacy began in the springtime of 2013, (Pope Francis) has started a tradition of washing the feet of the outcasts among us. He has celebrated this Mass, Holy Thursday, in a youth prison, in a center for disabled people and the elderly, and in a detention center on the outskirts of Rome.
In those places, the successor of Peter the Apostle washes the tattooed, swollen, and sometimes disfigured feet of these marginalized women and men, kissing each foot tenderly before moving on to the next person. As detained women and men wept openly, Francis told them, ‘The love that Jesus has for us is so big that he becomes a slave to serve us, to take care of us, to purify us.’”
After his homily, the Archbishop of Newark put on an apron and washed the feet of twelve parishioners. Similar scenes were unfolding in parishes around the Archdiocese.
At the end of the Mass, the consecrated hosts were carried by Cardinal Tobin in a procession to the Lady Chapel behind the main altar, where they were transferred to the Altar of Repose.
You may see more photos of the Holy Thursday Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart here.
Featured image: Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin washes the feet of parishioners at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, N.J. during Holy Thursday Mass, April 17, 2025. (Photos by Archdiocese of Newark/Julio Eduardo Herrera)
