Catherine-Mectilde de Bar of the Blessed Sacrament is, without any doubt, the most Eucharistic soul in what was a Eucharistic century par excellence, and a century of saints surpassing all others, le grand siècle, the great century of France’s mystic invasion, and the full flowering of the Council of Trent’s renewal of the Church in holiness. Mother Mectilde was so completely overwhelmed with the Mystery of the Eucharist that she desired to spend her whole life worshiping It with ever greater awe and wonder.

Thursday — the day of the Institution of the Eucharist was to her the feast of feasts. It was a weekly Corpus Christi, and she even established that the Mass and Office of Corpus Christi be said each Thursday (a practice we have maintained to the extent possible).

In this splendid text, entitled “On the Solemnity of Thursday”, Mother Mectilde pours out her soul in a torrent of Eucharistic amazement. She calls the day of the institution of the Eucharist “The Solemnity of Thursday” and Pascha (which is “Easter”, or more literally, “Passover”).  She sets forth why, in her particular Benedictine Observance, Thursday is celebrated as a weekly return to the Cenacle where our Lord instituted the Sacrament of His Love.

We at Vultus Christi will be gradually going through this entire text of Mother Mectilde in several smaller portions, since it ranks among the most important for our charism. The conference was originally published in The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love, the first book in English by or about Mother Mectilde.

In this first portion, Mother Mectilde intoduces her subject by letting her heart overflow with effusive praise of Thursday.

On the Solemnity of Thursday: O Precious Day!

Thursday: one can name it the day of the magnificences and profusions of divine love. It is on this day that Jesus Christ unfurls all the grandeurs of His munificence and gives to men the most incomprehensible proof of His charity, by instituting the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. O precious day! Day that we shall never know how to celebrate enough! Holy day, happy day, of which every instant must be infinitely precious to us who have the honor of being wholly consecrated to this august mystery.

Meditation: Thursday and Corpus Christi

The Passover Became the Mass

Holy Thursday, the night when He was delivered up, or rather when He gave Himself up for the life of the world, was the new Passover meal of the New Covenant in Christ’s Blood (Lk 22:20. See Jer 31:31-34; Heb  8:7-13, 12:24). It inaugurated His passage (or Passover) that was to be completed by the Pascal (or “Passover”) Mystery of His Cross and Resurrection.

This first Christian Passover transformed for Christians the Passover meal from an annual celebration to a weekly celebration. The Passover was consumed each week (and eventually every day), when the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world (Jn 1:29) was consumed at every Mass. Sunday, the Roman dies solis, the day dedicated to the sun as a god, became the Christian dies dominica, the Lord’s Day, for this day was the day of the Resurrection, a sort of new creation, an eighth day of creature that opened up to the horizons of the eternal day of the new heavens and earth of the new creation.

The Lord’s Day, the day of the Resurrection, was also regarded by Christians as the day of the Christian Passover because it was the day that Christ passed over from death to eternal life, allowing us to pass over from sin to life in Him. It became the day of baptisms, when the mystery of the Passover was applied to each person as an individual reality. Each person was liberated from the Egypt of sin and the Pharaoh of Satan through the Red Sea of Baptism.

Yet Holy Thursday was not Forgotten

Thus, even though Jesus Himself had celebrated the first Mass at a Thursday evening Passover, Sunday morning became the moment of sacrificing and consuming the New Passover Lamb. Holy Thursday itself became the first day of the commemoration of the passion of the Lord, and the celebratory character of the day was mitigated by the remembrance that it was the night on which Jesus was betrayed — the Kiss of Peace was not given, for instance, because it was impossible to forget that Judas had betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Christians kept vigil with the Lord on Thursday to accompany Him in the Garden, in His betrayal, imprisonment, and sorrows.

Yet, despite Sunday becoming the New Passover, and the joy of Thursday becoming dampened, Christians never forgot what Thursday was, that it was the day on which Jesus, by the Eucharist, in the words of Mother Mectilde, “exhausts all that Our Lord Jesus Christ is and can do”.

A Desire to Return to the Eucharistic Dimension of Holy Thursday

It was thus that, in the course of the centuries, the desire to return to the one thought of the Eucharist emerged. Holy Thursday was already taken up with other thoughts in addition to this one. Therefore the Church instituted Corpus Christi on the first open Thursday after the 50 day celebration of Easter and 8 day celebration of Pentecost. It is as if she held her joy at the mystery of that Thursday for 63 days, longing for those 9 weeks to return to the Cenacle and her Eucharistic Jesus.

A Perpetual Octave of Corpus Christi

If Holy Thursday was not enough for the amazement of the Church at the institution of the Eucharist, so that she had to return to it on the first available Thursday, then it can certainly be said that Corpus Christi was not enough for Mother Mectilde. She needed to return to it, and not just once or a twice a year. Nothing would suffice but to dedicate her whole life to this Mystery and to celebrate Corpus Christ almost every Thursday of the year with all the ceremonies except the procession.

Week after week, she would repeat the Corpus Christi office, with all its proper Psalms. Week after week, she would sing the glorious Corpus Christi Mass. Week after week, she, with all her sisters, would linger in front of the Most Blessed Sacrament all Thursday long, as It was exposed upon the altar — a rare privilege in those days, and one only done with an ecclesiastical approval that was not a matter of course.

Observance of the Weekly Corpus Christi at Our Lady of the Cenacle Monastery at Silverstream

It is not too much to say that the entire Institute of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration exists from Thursday and for Thursday, and it is the same with Our Lady of the Cenacle at Silverstream Priory. Our week can be thought of as a preparation for Thursday, the celebration of Thursday, and thanksgiving for Thursday, as each day is a preparation for Mass and Communion, the celebration of Mass, and thanksgiving.

At Silverstream Priory, we keep Thursday as a day of adoration and thanksgiving. Even though it is a workday in the world, we eliminate all unnecessary work, sacrificing a prime business day to linger in the presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament exposed. As much as possible, we celebrate the Office and Mass of Corpus Christi. And sometimes, indeed, visitors that are unfamiliar with our customs experience the Eucharistic fullness of the solemnity of Thursday even without us explaining its significance to us. In a heart full of Eucharistic amazement, visitors have been known to desire to “dwell in His courts” (Psalm 64(65):4-5) for they experience that “it is, good for us to be here” (Mt 17:4).