Maundy Thursday is the first panel of a triptych, the first of a three-part service, the Sacred Triduum. It will take us into the darkness of the vigil where we keep watch with Jesus in Gethsemane. We are like those first disciples who fell asleep and then ran away. When the time comes to put the world to rights we are not up for it. We’re not heroes. We can go only so far walking the way of the cross with Jesus. We want to be somewhere else.
When the Solemn Mass of the Lord’s Supper ends the Altar and nave are stripped of all ornamentation. The candles are extinguished. The bare Altar is washed and ceremonially dried; even the Sacrament House candle is put out, the Tabernacle left open and empty. The Church is made bare, liturgically destroyed. Everything which pertains to its life — even the Blessed Sacrament — is removed and the building is empty and lifeless, no longer, in a liturgical sense, a church. We’re naked, isolated with this fact laid bare; our need. And we are left to face the terrifying reality of Good Friday.