There is a word that runs like a thread through every reading we have just heard — a word so familiar it may have slipped past us. That word is fear.

I believe that there is a moment in every life when we wonder whether anyone actually cares; not just being polite, not whether they are helpful in a general way — but whether anyone loves us all the way down, with full knowledge of who we are. Today’s three readings give us the answer. And the answer is not a principle or a promise written on a wall. The answer is a Person, and he has been searching for you longer than you have been searching for him.

On Holy Thursday evening, we enter the Upper Room in shadow. The night is heavy — betrayal is in the air, the cross is hours away. In that charged and sorrowful atmosphere, Jesus takes bread and wine and gives himself to his disciples for the first time under these signs. We receive that gift in near silence, in the dim light of the Triduum. It is a gift wrapped in grief.