We at Vultus Christi are gradually going through Mother Mectilde’s conference ‘On the Solemnity of Thursday’. The conference was originally published in The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love, the first book in English by or about Mother Mectilde.

This is the third post in the series. Read the first post here, and the second post here.

In the second post, we discussed what Mother Mectilde means by calling the Benedictines of the Perptual Adoration “victims of the Host.” Today we finish our discussion the same portion of Mother Mectilde’s text, discussing what it means for Thursday to be a weekly Pascha and for Christ to exhaust all He can do in the Eucharist.

The Text: Thursday, a Day of Pascha (Continued)

For the victims of the Holy Sacrament, Thursday must be a day of Pascha, a day of solemnity and of rejoicing. This day is so abundant in graces that one can say that it exhausts all that Our Lord Jesus Christ is and can do. What more can He do after the institution of the divine Eucharist? What is there that is not [contained] in this august mystery?

Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC.

Pascha

Last week we treated of Mother Mectilde’s sacrificial theology and how for her our vocation is to become identified with the Eucharistic Victim of the Altar. Her sacrificial theology is summarised in what she says to the children of the Host. What does she say to them? “Thursday must be a day of Pascha.”

Pascha is simply the Latin form of the Hebrew word for Passover. In most languages, it is also the Christian word for Easter, since Easter is the Christian celebration of Passover. Pascha signifies the whole paschal mystery of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection that had been prefigured by the Paschal or Passover Lamb of old.

Hezekiah’s Pascha

In 2 Chronicles 30 we read of the most celebrated Passover since the original one at the time of the Exodus, when God led His people out of slavery in Egypt.

King Hezekiah has just purified the temple and restored the worship of God in it. He then calls together all of Israel telling them to return to the Lord by celebrating the Passover so that they may find mercy with the Lord and return to Him, and thus be freed from their captors and return to their land (see 1 Chron 30:9). We read:

And many people came together in Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the second month, a very great assembly. They set to work and removed the altars that were in Jerusalem, and all the altars for burning incense they took away and threw into the brook Kidron. And they slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month. And the priests and the Levites were ashamed, so that they consecrated themselves and brought burnt offerings into the house of the Lord. They took their accustomed posts according to the Law of Moses the man of God. The priests threw the blood that they received from the hand of the Levites.

Then the whole assembly agreed together to keep the feast for another seven days. So they kept it for another seven days with gladness. For Hezekiah king of Judah gave the assembly 1,000 bulls and 7,000 sheep for offerings, and the princes gave the assembly 1,000 bulls and 10,000 sheep. And the priests consecrated themselves in great numbers. The whole assembly of Judah, and the priests and the Levites, and the whole assembly that came out of Israel, and the sojourners who came out of the land of Israel, and the sojourners who lived in Judah, rejoiced. So there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came to his holy habitation in heaven.

After the temple was rebuilt, it became customary to celebrate Passover in the temple, with many sacrifices until the brook of Kidron ran red with the blood. These ceremonies were going on in the year Jesus Himself celebrated the Passover. Hezekiah’s Passover was a real sacrifice, as shown by the sprinkling of the blood of the lamb, a propitiatory sacrifice to find mercy with the Lord and freedom from captors. It is a true prefigurement of what Jesus did.

Jesus’ Pascha

Mother Mectilde is aware that the Institution of the Mass was a Passover celebrated on a Thursday. Jesus, in the Sacred Host, is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. His Sacred Blood anoints the doorposts of the Christian soul, so to speak, and is sprinkled upon us. Moreover, by receiving Him, we are united to Him, become one with Him. It is no longer by 1,000 bulls and 7,000 sheep that we are reconciled to God, but by one Sacrifice in which all the Sacrifices of old are fulfilled.

Holy Thursday evening to Easter Sunday is, taken together, the celebration of the Paschal or Passover Mystery of Jesus Christ: His suffering, death, and resurrection. Although, for Christians, the day of Pascha (Easter) is Sunday, Thursday has not been forgotten. Mother Mectilde wished to remember the Pascha that the Lord instituted on Thursday by a sort of perpetual octave. Every Thursday for her became Holy Thursday, when Jesus transformed the Jewish Pascha forever by instituting the Mass.

This is why every Thursday is for us Pascha, like that first Christian Passover, Holy Thursday, on which Jesus instituted the Eucharist. Every Thursday has become the Passover, the day on which the Passover Lamb is offered and sinners pass over from death to life. Here we are deep within the sacrificial theology of Mother Mectilde.

The Wonders of this Pascha

The astonishment she feels at this day is aptly summed up in her statement that this weekly Pascha is “so abundant in graces that one can say that it exhausts all that Our Lord Jesus Christ is and can do” This sounds at first like hyperbole. Is not our Lord Jesus Christ a Divine Person? Can a single day really exhaust all He can do? Mother Mectilde explains: “What more can He do after the institution of the divine Eucharist? What is there that is not [contained] in this august mystery?” It is Himself! What more does He have to give than Himself? For Mother Mectilde, Thursday has become synonymous with the Mystery of Jesus’ Sacred Body and Precious Blood. Any other grace He gives is necessarily less than this grace. As Mother Mectilde says elsewhere: ” Oh! Too greedy is the person for whom Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is not enough!”

One Victim with Him

The prayers of the Missal speak of Christians becoming una secum hostia, which translates to one Sacrificial Victim with Him. This is the centre of Mother Mectilde’s spirituality. But in a day when the word “victim” no longer conjures images of Divine Worship, and when it has more become associated with unjust and incomprehensible suffering and with violent crimes and injustices, is this not word not outdated as a description of our spiritual life? After all, today many spend their lives fighting against victimization, and others suffer terribly from its consequences. Yet our Lord did become the Sacrificial Victim for sins, and this was to repair us and heal us. He also invited all of us to take up our cross and follow Him, a clear invitation to share in His victimal offering. Victimal union with Jesus cannot be thought of as what we call victimization, for union with Jesus on the cross both heals us and helps to heal many others, through Christ, while mere suffering leaves lasting wounds. Indeed, many bear their wounds longer than the Lord wills because they do not unite them to the victimal offering of Christ on the Cross.

This union with Jesus as offering is for today, and it is has had an especial attraction for the Saints that are especially relevant today. We need look no further than Padre Pio and St Thérèse. For both of these, their victimal offering in union with Jesus was central to their lives and holiness.