Holy Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday from the Vatican “Christ loved us and wanted to be near every one of us forever, even to the end of the world.” FULL VIDEO

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re presided over the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday in the evening at St. Peter’s Basilica. The liturgy, is known as In Coena Domini or Mass "of the Lord's Supper." It commemorates the institution of the Holy Eucharist by Jesus. Cardinal Re gave the homily, and said, "He loved them to the end." Cardinal Re is the dean of the College of Cardinals. He continued that Holy Thursday,  “reminds us of how much we have been loved." Cardinal Re noted, Jesus loved them with “the highest and unsurpassable degree of His capacity to love.” He explained that Jesus gave gift of the Sacrament of the Eucharist  because “Christ loved us and wanted to be near every one of us forever, even to the end of the world.” The cardinal said this “is the gift through which Christ walks with us as light, as strength, as nourishment, as help in all the days of our history.” “The Eucharist is the center and life of the Church”, Cardinal Re said and so should also be “the center and heart of the life of every Christian as well.” Going further the Cardinal said, “the Eucharist is a reality not only to be believed, but to be lived.” “Those who believe in the Eucharist never feel alone in life,” the Cardinal explained. “They know that in the dimness and in the silence of all the Churches there is Someone who knows their name… And before the tabernacle, everyone can confide whatever is in their heart and receive comfort, strength and peace of heart” Cardinal Re explained that, Christ, our high priest, said: “Do this – that is, the Sacrament of the Eucharist – in memory of me.” On Easter Sunday, he also said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.” The Cardinal indicated that Jesus transmits to His Apostles the powers of the priesthood, “so that the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Pardon might continue and be renewed in the Church. He gave humanity an incomparable gift.”  “In the story of the boundless love of Christ who loved us ‘till the end,’ there is the bitterness of human disloyalty and betrayal,” the Cardinal said. We can thereby gain, according to the cardinal, “joy of His pardon with repentance and with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and to begin a spiritual recovery with hearts open more to God and to all our brothers and sisters.” 

 Despite the pandemic, “we must continue to pray with our thoughts and our hearts filled with gratitude for Jesus Christ, who wanted to remain present among us as our contemporary under the appearances of bread and wine,” he counseled. Cardinal Re explained that we are to “raise a huge chorus of prayer so that the hand of God might come to our aid and end this tragic situation that has worrying consequences in the fields of health, employment, economy, education, and direct relationships with people.” As to go and "knock loudly on the door of God, the Father Almighty.”