The Holy Week Reader—Thursday: Go and Do Likewise

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day faithful Christians memorialize the several events surrounding Christ’s final Passover meal, which he observed in the company of his closest friends—well, in the company of mostly his closest friends. This evening initiates the Paschal Triduum, the three-day sequence commemorating the passion, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection. “Maundy” derives from the Latin mandatum, for mandate or commandment, commemorating, primarily, the “new command” that his disciples love one another as he has loved them. This and similar charges Jesus issues instructing his disciples to follow his example peppers this final evening. We see this when he washes his disciples’ feet and demands they do likewise, when he says he is about to go where they will later follow, when he says that whoever loves him will obey his commands, living as he has lived, and when he instructs that they are to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of him.