Maundy Thursday

Homily

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Thursday 2 April, 2026
St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth

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Earlier this week, I had the great privilege of being interviewed by Rabbi Yonatan Dorfman, an orthodox Jewish Rabbi from Jerusalem, who is I believe a well-known figure in the Jewish community.

Rabbi Dorfman was keen to speak to me, partly to thank the Catholic Church in Australia for the way in which we responded with such care and concern for our Jewish brothers and sisters at the time of the Bondi tragedy in December last year. As we were preparing to celebrate Christmas at that time the Jewish people were celebrating Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights. And now, of course, as we are preparing to celebrate Easter, the Jewish community are celebrating the Passover. It is important for us to continue to pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters, who sadly still remain under pressure and the fear of violence.

There is, of course, a very significant link between the Jewish Passover and our celebration of Easter. This evening we are celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, which we call the Last Supper because it was the last meal Jesus had with His disciples before His death. The gospel tradition would link Jesus’s last supper with a Passover meal, and our faith teaches us that in this way Jesus drew His disciples, and draws us tonight, into a new and deeper appreciation of God’s saving mystery. The Jewish Passover celebrates and recalls God setting His people free from the tyranny of the pharaohs in Egypt. Jesus transforms the Passover meal into a celebration of God’s greater work of setting His people free from the tyranny and destructive power of evil and sin through the life, death and resurrection of His only Son.

After escaping from Egypt, the Jewish people were led by God into the desert and there, through Moses, God gave his people the Ten Commandments. It was in reflecting on this great gift from God that Moses exclaimed:

What other nation is there that has its gods so near to them as our God is to us!

In the Jewish Scriptures, God‘s presence to His people in the desert is made real by the pillar of fire which accompanied their journeying at night and by the pillar of cloud which accompanied their journeying by day.

This presence of God to His people was remarkable, but it was only a hint of the depths of God’s desire to be with His people. That desire was fully realised in Jesus who as our faith assures us is God among us as one of us. We no longer need to encounter God in fire and in cloud. Now we encounter Him in person - in Jesus. We meet Him in the pages of the gospel, both when we read the gospels at home and when we listen to them proclaimed at Mass. We meet Him in our fellow Christians, especially when they themselves are in love with the Lord and reveal His face to us by the way they talk and behave. But most of all we meet Him in the Eucharist when we gather, as we have tonight, to do what Jesus did on the night before He was betrayed. Just as on that night He took bread, broke it and gave it to His disciples saying, “Take this, all of you and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you” so at every Mass the priest will do the same. And just as Jesus took the chalice and offered it to His disciples saying “Take this all of you and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins” so the priest, in Jesus’ name, will do the same.

A little later the priest will lift up the consecrated host, the Lamb of God, and call us to come forward for the Supper of the Lamb. And in response we will step out of our seats and approach the altar. As we do, we might remember the words of Jesus in St John’s Gospel: “When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself”. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist the Lord fulfills this promise: He draws us to Himself so that we can do what He invites us to do in another part of John’s gospel: “Make your home in me as I make my home in you.”

Why has the Lord given this remarkable gift to His people, and, in particular tonight, to us? It is surely because of all that He asks of us as His disciples: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”; “those who do not take up their cross and follow me are not worthy of me”; “it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven”; “love one another as I have loved you”; “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. These are extraordinarily high demands, and they only scratch the surface of what the Lord asks of us. How can we possibly hope to reach the standard Jesus sets for us? The answer is, of course that we can’t – or at least not on our own. As Jesus Himself reminds us, “Without me you can do nothing”.

But because of the Eucharist we need never be without Him. He gives Himself to us as food and drink and through the Eucharist unites Himself with us in such an intimate way that He begins to live within us. As Saint Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me”.

There is something God-given in us which urges us to do more and to be more. At times this gets corrupted, and rather than wanting to do and be more we find ourselves wanting to have more.  It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that our happiness and fulfilment ultimately depend on what we have. But really our ultimate happiness depends on who and what we are: on the extent to which we are living lives of integrity, generosity, compassion and openness to God. It is Jesus’s gift of Himself in the Eucharist which can gradually transform us and enable us to become all that God has created us to be. Tonight, on the eve of his passion and death, He cries out to each one of us: Without me you can do nothing, so come to me if you labour and are over-burdened, come to me in the Eucharist, and I will give you rest. 

As Moses once said so truly:  What other people is there that has its gods so near as our God is to us?