Maundy Thursday 2026

1 Corinthians 11.23-26

This is my body that is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

This remains among Christianity’s most controversial claims, that—in the Eucharist—bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus Christ. And yet, metaphysically speaking, this is no more remarkable than the incarnation itself. For the fullness of God to be found in a human being is already to transgress the most profound distinction that there is, between creator and creation, God and the world. In comparison, it is a small step between body and bread. 

But of course, the physical chemistry of human flesh and baked good has little to do with any of this, really. What we are dealing with is much more audacious than alchemical transformation. Those who object to the doctrine on those grounds have not only missed the point altogether, but missed its even more ludicrous significance. More incredible than unleavened bread becoming human flesh, and more profound even than God entering into the created order in human flesh, is for God to enter into our human flesh. 

The eucharist is nothing other than the consummation of the incarnation. Once upon a time, God entered the world, and walked alongside us. But not content with that level of intimacy, God elects to enter us: not the general “us” of the world or the Church, but the particular “us”, the particular you and me. It is, in other words, not the just the world that God loves enough to come into, but you specifically. This is what this thing means, which we do Sunday after Sunday; whose institution we remember year after year on Maundy Thursday. It signifies God’s desire for intimacy with you, which is the intimacy of a mother and a gestating child. In the eucharist, we are all of us Blessed Mary, who bears the Christ-child; our bellies full of Christ, we are like her, someone who is one with God. 

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Maundy Thursday confronts us with this unspeakable intimacy, alongside what we choose to do with it, which is to betray it, to abandon it, to murder it, and leave it for dead and in humiliation. 

The funny thing about intimate relationships in general is that those most precious to us—our lovers, our children, our parents, our closest friends—turn out also to be those who are most likely to hurt us most. There is nothing so surprising about this. As the people we spend most time with, they have most opportunity to say and do things—whether deliberately or by accident—that end up causing us grief. But also, the vulnerability that is entailed by love is easily, even if inadvertently, exploited. 

And yet, very often, intimate relationships survive various kinds of betrayal; sometimes they do so despite our better judgement, and certainly the judgements—not to say, judgmentalisms—of our peers. In a modern world in which all decisions are modelled after consumer choices, the Christian insistence on the indelibility of certain kinds of relationships seems not only out-dated and wrong-headed, but perhaps also even abusive. There is no denying that an absolute commitment to love provides plenty opportunity for the abuse of that love. And yet, that is the commitment to which we insist we are called, in response to the commitment that God makes, to love us and forgive us, regardless of our offences and infidelities; this commitment to remain with us, even in us, through all our foibles and failings, our misdeeds and misadventures.

This is, by the way, the virtue of frequent communion. It is the embodiment of God’s perpetual and unconditional love and forgiveness; it is God’s own way of saying, nay, of showing, of enacting God’s desire for intimacy with us, come whatever hell or high water we have in the past week ourselves foolishly chosen to visit, or visit upon others, or indeed, visit upon God. 

It is not for nothing that the Holy Triduum, whose centre is Good Friday—the grave day of our most grievous betrayal—is surrounded by the Eucharist. Dramatically, there is something odd about this. We make a big deal out of the fact that no Mass is celebrated on Good Friday, and that between Good Friday and the first Mass of Easter, Christ is eucharistically absent—there is no consecrated bread present in our churches. And yet, in most churches, the eucharist is, in fact, celebrated more frequently this week than in any other week of the year: on Maundy Thursday, and then just over a day later at the Easter Vigil, or at most on Easter Sunday morning. This is crucially important as a sign that on this week, of all weeks, these few days, of all days, God comes to us, come as close to us as possible, even dwells within us.

The eucharist is the paradox of grace in edible form. Tonight, we will abandon Christ in the darkness, as our liturgy compels us to do. But he will not have abandoned us, as the sacrament we will now receive guarantees.